I 


and  Human  Relaillls 


THE  STEPHEN  GREENE 


I'Sim H (I  ,A '4''m\MMmm\m 


BR  115  .S6  C5  1922 


The  Christian  faith  and 
human  relations 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 
AND  HUMAN  RELATIONS 


STEPHEN  GREENE 

Founder  of  the  Stephen  Greene  Lectureship  in  the 

Newton  Theological  Institution 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 
AND  HUMAN  RELATIONS 


\V 


-i      ■  1922 


BEING  THE  LECTURES  DELIVERED  ON         „   "        ""^.aS 

THE  STEPHEN  GREENE  FOUNDATION  —^ 

IN 

THE  NEWTON  THEOLOGICAL  INSTITUTION 
1920-1921 


PHILADELPHIA 

THE    JUDSON     PRESS 

BOSTON  CHICAGO  ST.  LOUIS  LOS  ANGELES 

KANSAS  CITY  SEATTLE  TORONTO 


Copyright,  1992,  by 
GILBERT  N.  BRINK,  Skcrhtary 

Published  May,  1922 


Printed  in  U.  S.  A. 


FOREWORD 

THE  STEPHEN  GREENE  LECTURESHIP 
(In  The  Newton  Theological  Institution) 

Through  the  generosity  of  Mrs.  Stephen  Greene  of 
Newton  Center,  Mass.,  and  of  her  four  sons — Mr. 
Edwin  Farnham  Greene,  Mr.  S.  Harold  Greene,  Mr. 
Everitt  A.  Greene,  and  Mr.  F.  Hartwell  Greene — 
a  lecture  fund  of  $10,000  has  been  established  in 
The  Newton  Theological  Institution,  Newton  Center, 
Mass.,  in  memory  of  the  late  Stephen  Greene,  who 
was  a  trustee  of  the  Seminary  from  1893  to  his 
death  in  1901,  and  singularly  devoted  to  its  interests. 

The  income  of  this  fund  is  to  be  devoted  to  courses 
of  lectures  by  scholars  who  can  make  valuable  con- 
tributions to  the  present  aspects  of  our  common 
Christianity. 

The  present  volume,  the  first  in  the  series,  con- 
tains the  lectures  given  during  the  academic  year 
closing  June,  1921. 

The  timely  discussions  of  vital  topics,  which  it 
contains,  fulfils  the  purpose  of  the  Foundation  in  a 
way  that  it  is  believed  will  be  generally  recognized. 

George  Edwin  Horr, 

President  The  Newton  Theological 
Institution. 


CONTENTS 

LECTURE  PAGE 

I.  The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family.  .       1 

II.  The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Life  of 

THE  Community 49 

III.  The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State.  . .     71 

IV.  The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry 105 

V.  The  Christian  Spirit  and  Interna- 
tional Relations  125 


I 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
FAMILY 

By  William  C.  Bitting,  D.  D., 

Minister  Second  Baptist  Ciiurch,  St.  Louis. 


SYNOPSIS 


Introduction 

The  Hebrew  family.  The  name.  The  members.  The  home 
life.  Positions  of  wives,  children,  other  members.  Religious 
and  educational  aspects.  Jesus'  use  of  the  family  institution 
as  a  Christian  parable. 

I.  Jesus  Glorified  Family  Life  : 

1.  Was  a  member  of  a  family. 

2.  Visited  homes. 

3.  Loved  children. 

4.  Sympathized  with  afflicted  families. 

5.  Attended  weddings. 

6.  Illustrated  from  family  life. 

II.  The  Family  Gave  Terms  and  Ideas  to  the  Christian 

Faith  : 

1.  The  Old  Testament  idea  of  God's  Fatherhood. 

2.  The  Christian  idea  of  God — Father  : 

(1)  Of  Jesus. 

(2)  Of  disciples  of  Jesus. 

(3)  Of  all  men. 

(4)  The  "  Kingdom  of  God  "—the  Father's  rule. 

3.  The  term  "  Brother"  derived  from  family  life: 

(1)  Use  among  Christians. 

(2)  Extension  to  all  mankind. 

4.  Need  for  sane  Bible  study — Paul  and  the  family. 


4       The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

III.  The  Christian  Faith  Transfigures  the  Family: 

1.  Sanctifies  marriage. 

2.  Gives  spiritual  meaning  to  parenthood: 

(1)  A  means  of  discovering  God. 

(2)  An  interpretation  of  God  to  offspring. 

(3)  A  provision  for  spiritual  opportunity  to  children. 

(4)  Parental  self -enrichment. 

3.  Glorifies  motherhood. 

4.  Exalts  filial  life. 

5.  Establishes  exclusive  rule  of  love  in  the  home. 

6.  Extends  the  family  idea  to  all  realms  of  life. 

IV.  The  Message  of   the   Christian   Faith   About  the 
Family  : 

1.  The   opportunity   of   the  pulpit   to   teach,   and   of  the 

Christian  family  to  illustrate  the  Christian  Faith. 

2.  The  demand  for  religious  education. 

3.  Need  for  a  theology  based  on  the  family  idea : 

(1)  In  Christian  lands. 

(2)  In  foreign  missionary  work. 

4.  Relation  to  God  above  family  interference. 

5.  The  social  order  and  the  family  idea. 

6.  Sin  is  unfilial  and  unfraternal. 

7.  The  family  idea  in  salvation. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
FAMILY 


THE  family  is  our  oldest  social  institution.  He- 
brew family  life  was  much  superior  in  character 
to  that  of  other  nations  of  antiquity.  A  comparison 
is  outside  the  scope  of  this  lecture.  It  will  be  well 
for  us  first  to  sketch  the  Hebrew  family.  Then  we 
shall  note  the  sanctification  of  the  family  by  our 
Lord ;  the  contributions  of  family  life  to  the  Chris- 
tian Faith ;  the  contributions  of  the  Christian  Faith 
to  the  family;  and  finally  some  messages  to  the 
world  that  come  from  such  a  survey  as  the  limits 
of  this  lecture  will  allow. 

The  Hebrew  Family 

The  background  of  our  study  must  be  the  Hebrew 
conception  of  the  family.  Of  course  there  were 
developments  during  its  history.  Furthermore,  it 
is  important  always  to  bear  in  mind  that  we  must 
judge  this  institution  by  the  standards  of  the  ancient 
East,  and  not  by  those  of  the  Christian  home  today. 

There  is  no  Old  Testament  word  corresponding  to 
the  English  word  family.  The  term  "  house  "  is 
used.  Relations  between  the  members  of  the  family 
are  mostly  described  in  terms  derived  from  physical 
sources.  We  read  of  Noah  and  his  house,^  of  the 
house  of  David,  of  Israel.  The  material  building 
that  sheltered  the  group  gave  its  name  to  the  group. 

»Gen.  7:1;  12  :  1. 


6       The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

The  Hebrew  family  was  very  much  larger  than  ours. 
It  consisted  of  all  who  were  dependent  upon  the  one 
man  who  was  the  head  of  the  house.  Embraced  in 
it  were  the  man's  mother,  if  a  widow ;  his  wives  and 
concubines  and  all  their  children;  sometimes  the 
offspring  of  other  women,  as  in  the  case  of 
Jephthah ;  ^  the  daughters-in-law ;  sons-in-law ;  other 
free  Israelite  relatives;  dependents;  resident  for- 
eigners; male  and  female  slaves,  both  Israelite  and 
foreign,  home-born  and  purchased.  The  large  size 
of  the  family  was  partly  due  to  polygamy,  partly  to 
the  need  for  protection  and  the  necessities  of  labor, 
and  partly  to  other  causes  which  need  not  be  given 
here.  The  husband's  mother  was  often  the  most 
important  member  of  the  household.  A  man  might 
have  many  wives,  but  he  could  have  only  one  mother. 
Obedience  to  her  was  rigorously  enforced  during 
childhood,  and  sons  grew  up  with  a  high  sense  of 
honor  for  mothers.  Wives,  however,  were  property, 
and  subject  to  the  husband's  authority.  Mothers 
often  selected  wives.^  Mothers  of  kings  are  fre- 
quently mentioned  in  giving  the  succession  of  mon- 
archs,  but  never  their  wives.  Many  of  these  moth- 
ers had  large  influence  during  the  reigns  of  their 
sons.*  Wives  were  obtained  by  the  normal  process 
of  love,  but  also  by  capture  in  war,^  or  by  purchase.^ 
The  only  free  woman  in  Israel  was  a  widow.  One 
name  for  husband  was  haxil,  "master";  and  for 
wife  beulah,  "  married."  Divorce'  was  at  the  discre- 
tion of  the  husband,  although  there  were  some  limi- 

2  Judg.  11  :  1. 

3  Gen.  21:21. 

*  2  Kings  24  :  8,  12,  15  ;  Jer.  22  :  26. 

B  Dent.  21  :  10-14. 

«  Gen.  34  :  16  ;  Exod.  22  :  16,  17  ;  Deut.  22  :  29  ;  Ruth  4  :  10 

^  Deut.  24  :  1. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  7 

tations.  A  woman  was  entitled  to  receive  a  bill  of 
rights  ^  which  protected  her  from  being  again  un- 
der subjection  to  the  same  husband.  A  wife  could 
not  divorce  her  husband.  She  was  entirely  at  the 
mercy  of  her  haal. 

There  were  other  female  residents  in  the  home. 
Often  there  were  concubines,  and  the  body  of  each 
female  slave  belonged  to  the  head  of  the  house.''  All 
children  born  of  wives,  concubines,  and  slaves  were 
the  property  of  the  master,  but  the  children  of  the 
wives  could  inherit  a  larger  part  of  the  estate  than 
the  other  children.  Sarah,  Rachel,  and  Leah  had 
slave  girls.^^  Polygamy  was  recognized  in  the  law 
and  is  also  described  in  the  history  of  Israel.  Many 
kings  had  harems."  Solomon's  establishment  is  con- 
spicuous.i-  In  the  nature  of  the  case  the  overwhelm- 
ing majority  of  the  population  must  have  been  mo- 
nogamous both  because  the  supply  of  women 
probably  did  not  exceed  the  number  of  men,  and  be- 
cause of  the  expense  of  maintaining  polygamy. 
There  were  monogamists  whose  lives  contrast  with 
those  of  polygamists.  Adam,  Noah,  Lot,  Isaac,  and 
Joseph  each  had  only  one  wife,  while  Abraham,^'' 
Jacob,^^  David,  and  Solomon  ^^  had  more  than  one. 

There  were  frequent  family  quarrels  because  of 
the  disagreements  between  the  mothers  and  off- 
spring of  the  sub-families  in  the  same  household. 
We  all  recall  the  cases  of  Sarah  and  Hagar,  Rachel 
and  Leah,  Hannah  and  Peninnah,^«  and  the  history 
of  the  household   of  David.     Sometimes  brothers 

*  Isa.  50  :  1  ;  Jer.  3:8.  i3  Qen.  25  :  1-7. 

•  Gen.  IG  :  1,  15.  "  Gen.  20. 

10  Gen.  20.  15  i  i^iQgg  u  .  j.g 

"2  Chron.  11:21.  i«  1  Sam.  1   :   1-4. 

^-1  Kings  11  :  1-3. 


8       The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

married  their  half-sisters.  This  is  the  statement 
concerning  Abraham  and  Sarah. ^^  In  the  develop- 
ment of  the  law  there  came  to  be  a  statute  against 
such  a  marriage. 

The  lot  of  the  children  is  interesting.  The  father 
was  supreme  in  his  household.  He  could  give  his 
daughter  in  marriage/^  and  could  even  sell  his 
daughter  to  be  a  concubine,  and  his  children  as 
slaves.^^  He  had  the  power  of  life  and  death  over 
the  lives  of  all  children  of  the  household.  This  is 
illustrated  in  the  proposed  sacrifice  of  Isaac  by 
Abraham,2o  in  the  vow  of  Jephthah,^^  and  in  the 
sacrifice  of  children  to  Molech,  a  Canaanite  custom 
against  which  it  was  necessary  to  protest  until  a 
late  period  of  Jewish  history.^^  The  utmost  respect 
for  parents  was  insisted  upon.-^  The  book  of  Prov- 
erbs is  fertile  in  injunctions  of  filial  respect.  Smiting 
or  cursing  a  parent  was  punishable  by  death.^*  A 
curse  was  pronounced  on  disrespect  to  parents.-^  A 
son  who  was  stubborn,  or  rebellious,  or  a  glutton,  or 
a  drunkard,  could  be  stoned  to  death  on  the  testimony 
of  parents  given  to  the  elders  of  the  community.  A 
large  family  was  considered  a  great  blessing,-^  and 
childlessness  was  looked  upon  both  as  a  misfortune 
and  a  disgrace." 

In  the  early  civilization  out  of  which  most  of 
these  conditions  grew  there  were  economic  reasons 

"  Gen.  20  :  12. 

"  Gen.  29. 

i»  Exod.  21  :  7. 

20  Gen.  22:9,  10. 

21  Judg.  11  :  30-40. 

22  Lev.  18  :  21  ;  20  :  2-5  ;  2  Kings  23  :  10  ;  Jer.  32  :  35  ;  Micah  6  :  7. 

23  Exod.  20  :  12  ;  Lev.  19  :  3  ;  Deut.  5  :  16  ;  Prov.  1:8;  6  :  20  :  19  : 
26  ;  20  :  20  ;  23  :  22  ;  28  :  24  ;  30  :  11,  17  ;  Ezek.  22  :  7  ;  Micah  7  :  6. 

24  Exod.  21 :  15,  17  ;  Lev.  20  :  9.         20  pg.  127  :  4,  5. 

2«  Deut.  27  :  16.  27  Qen.  15  :  2  ;  1  Sam.  1  :  9-11. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  9 

that  were  influential.  Where  families  had  to  defend 
themselves  in  war,  where  labor  was  needed  for  the 
household,  the  herd,  and  the  farm,  and  where  capital 
consisted  exclusively  of  concrete  property,  the  mem- 
bers of  the  family  were  great  assets  to  the  baal  of 
the  house.  The  girls  were  valuable  for  domestic 
work,  and  could  bring  money  to  their  father  when 
sold  as  wives  or  concubines,  and  could  promote  offen- 
sive and  defensive  alliances  when  given  in  marriage. 
Sons,  however,  were  the  chief  desire  of  the  parents. 
All  the  confessed  children  of  the  head  of  the  house 
were  considered  legitimate.  Jephthah's  mother  was 
a  prostitute.-^  The  sons  were  the  heirs  of  the 
father,  and  the  first-born  was  the  preferred  lega- 
tee.-' Even  when  the  sons  were  married  they 
remained  in  a  sense  members  of  the  father's 
house.  When  Jacob  went  into  Egypt  he  took  with 
him  all  his  sons  and  their  families.-^*^ 

The  religious  condition  of  the  family  was  under 
the  care  of  the  head  of  the  house.  Originally  he  was 
the  priest  of  the  home.  He  erected  altars  and  offered 
sacrifices.  The  Passover  was  a  family  rite.^^  Chil- 
dren were  to  be  instructed  in  religion.^-  There  is  no 
indication  that  there  was  any  effort  made  to  educate 
the  children.  The  Jerusalem  Talmud  states  that  the 
first  school  for  the  instruction  of  children  was  estab- 
lished a  century  before  Christ,  and  there  are  indica- 
tions that  by  the  year  65  of  the  Christian  era  there 
were  schools  in  every  Palestinian  town. 

Such  was  the  family  when  Jesus  came  to  establish 

28.Tudg.  11  :  1. 

»  Gen.  27  :  20. 

'"Gen.  46  :G.  7. 

"Exod.   12. 

"  Exod.  12  :  21-27  ;  13  :  5-9  ;  Dent.  4:9;  6:7,  20. 

B 


10     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

the  kingdom  of  God.  The  family  was  interwoven 
with  the  Jewish  life.  It  was  bound  up  with  the 
social  and  political  conditions,  and  shaped  national 
life.  It  is  well  for  us  to  remember  that  there  must 
have  been  multitudes  of  families  in  Israel  where 
there  was  tender  love,  and  where  the  natural  and 
beautiful  outgoings  of  the  human  heart  found  their 
expression.  It  must  also  be  remembered  that  the 
family  as  an  institution  was  in  process  of  develop- 
ment away  from  many  features  it  had  in  common 
with  the  families  of  other  nations,  and  again  it  must 
be  emphasized  that  we  must  not  judge  Oriental  fami- 
lies, Hebrew  or  Gentile,  by  the  standards  of  Ameri- 
can Christian  homes. 

I.  JESUS  GLORIFIED  FAMILY  LIFE 

The  incarnation  exalted  every  normal  human  in- 
stitution and  process.  Industries  have  been  forever 
made  sacred  by  the  hand  of  the  Carpenter  of  Naza- 
reth.^^  Commercial  processes  have  been  sanctified 
because  our  Lord  engaged  in  them.  Social  gather- 
ings have  become  holy  because  he  participated  in 
them.    Likewise  he  glorified  the  family. 

1.  Jesus  came  into  the  world  as  a  member  of  a 
family,  and  not  as  a  sudden  apparition.^*  Every 
Christmas  celebrates  this  august  event.  He  lay  on 
the  bosom  of  a  mother,  and  rested  in  the  arms  of  a 
father.  He  was  obedient  to  them,^°  not  only  because 
Jewish  law  and  custom  required  such  respect,  but 
because  of  his  natural  love  for  his  parents.  He 
worked  in  his  father's  business.     Some  think  that 

33  Mark  6  :  3. 
8*  John  7  :  27. 
85  Luke  2:51. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  11 

Joseph  died  before  Jesus  entered  upon  his  public 
work,  and  that  the  burden  of  the  family  support  fell 
on  our  Lord.  He  was  the  eldest  of  seven  children  in 
that  Nazareth  home.  The  names  of  his  four 
brothers  are  given  to  us,  and  he  had  more  than  one 
sister.^**  It  must  have  been  a  great  grief  to  him  that 
the  members  of  his  own  family  did  not  understand 
him,  and  did  not  appreciate  his  work.^^  They  re- 
garded him  as  insane.^^  Nevertheless,  he  appears 
not  to  have  broken  the  family  ties.  The  Biblical 
accounts  of  his  mother's  interest  in  him  are  full  of 
beautiful  suggestion.^^ 

2.  Jesus  visited  homes.  No  one  would  want  to 
sacrifice  the  sweet  stories  of  his  visits  to  that  Beth- 
any home  which  he  cheered  and  hallowed  so  fre- 
quently by  his  presence,  and  of  his  tender  love  for  its 
sisters  and  brother  who  were  his  intimate  friends.^^ 
Nor  can  we  forget  how  he  went  to  the  home  of 
Jairus,^^  of  Zacchseus,^-  and  Peter,^^  and  his  interest 
in  the  Syrophenician  woman,**  and  the  centurion's 
servant.*^ 

3.  Jesus  was  interested  in  children.  He  watched 
their  games,*^  and  no  doubt  had  participated  in 
them.  He  did  not  think  that  their  sports  were 
trivial,  but  from  them  got  at  least  one  illustration 
of  the  Jewish  nation  of  his  day.  He  rebuked  those 
who  would  prevent  children  from  coming  to  him.*^ 
More  than  once  he  set  a  child  in  the  midst  of  the 
ambitious  Twelve  and  used  its  life  as  a  text  for 

«  Mark  6:3,  «2  Luke  19  :  Iflf. 

"  John  7:5;  Mark  6  :  4.  "Mark  1  :  31  and  parallel. 

"Mark  3:21.  "  Mark  7  :  25ff. 

«»  Luke  2  :  48  :  John  2:3.  «  Matt.  8  :  5  and  parallel. 

♦^  John   11  :  17CF.  :  12:  ICf.  *»  Luke  7  :  32. 

"  Matt.  9  :  18  and  parallel.  «t  Mark  10  :  13-16. 


12     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

humility.*^  Perhaps  his  greatest  saying  concerning 
the  spirit  of  receptivity  and  continual  open-minded- 
ness  is  the  declaration  that  none  could  enter  God's 
kingdom,  nor  remain  in  it,  who  did  not  possess  the 
open  receptive  soul  of  a  little  child. *^ 

4.  Especially  noticeable  is  Jesus*  compassion  for 
afflicted  homes.  All  three  of  his  raisings  from  the 
dead  reveal  his  interest  in  homes  broken  by  death.^^ 
There  is  no  doubt  that  his  heart  entered  thoroughly 
into  the  grief  that  bereavement  brought. 

5.  Jesus'  presence  at  one  wedding  is  recorded. 
His  participation  in  the  efforts  of  the  host  to  make 
the  occasion  conform  to  the  standards  of  the  day  is 
of  great  interest.^^  No  doubt  he  was  present  upon 
many  other  similar  occasions.  His  parables  of  the 
marriage  of  the  king's  son,^-  and  the  ten  virgins^^ 
indicate  his  familiarity  with  nuptial  occasions. 

6.  Jesus  illustrated  spiritual  truth  from  the  proc- 
esses of  family  life.  It  was  inevitable  that,  since 
the  home  even  in  his  day  afforded  the  most  beautiful 
exhibition  of  love  and  of  sacred  relationships,  our 
Lord  should  use  it  in  his  teaching.  The  genius  that 
saw  illustrations  of  spiritual  reality  in  all  life's  proc- 
esses could  not  overlook  the  family.  Recall  his  par- 
ables of  the  two  sons,^*  the  householder  who  brings 
forth  things  new  and  old  from  his  storehouse,^^  the 
midnight  visit  of  the  friend  in  search  of  bread,  the 
father  waiting  for  the  return  of  his  son,'^''  the  servant 
who  confesses  that  he  cannot  exceed  his  duty,"  the 

*»  Matt.  18  :  1-5. 

«  Matt.  18  :  3  ;  Luke  18  :  17. 

»«  Matt.  9  :  18  and  parallel ;  Luke  7  :  11-15  ;  John  11 :  1-46. 

61  John  2  :  1-11. 

«  Matt.  22  :  1-13.  »»  Matt.  13  :  52. 

68  Matt.  25  :  1-13.  ^e  Lu^e  15  :  llfiE. 

6*  Matt,  21  :  28-32.  "  Luke  17  :  7-10. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  13 

woman  mixing  the  leaven  with  the  flour,^^  the  mother 
patching  garments.''^  The  kitchen  and  the  parlor, 
the  bedroom  and  the  dining-room,*'*^  the  pantry,  and 
the  front  door  all  alike  were  made  to  yield  illustra- 
tions of  spiritual  reality. 

The  touch  of  a  dear  one  can  make  sacred  a  book 
or  an  ornament.  It  is  only  natural  that  all  disciples 
of  Jesus  should  feel  that  the  home  is  forevermore 
made  holy  by  the  incarnation,  and  the  glorification 
of  it  just  indicated.  Every  wedding  witnesses  to  our 
desire  for  his  presence  thereat.  When  the  shadow 
of  death  comes  across  our  households  we  retreat  for 
comfort  to  the  words  of  the  Christ  who  revealed  his 
sympathy  with  the  bereaved.  There  is  not  a  stage  of 
home  life  from  its  establishment  by  marriage  to  its 
dissolution  by  death  that  has  not  been  sanctified  by 
Jesus  Christ. 

11.  THE   FAMILY  GAVE  TERMS  AND  IDEAS 
TO  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH 

1.  The  word  "  Father"  is  used  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment of  Jehovah.  He  is  frequently  called  the  Father 
of  Israel  ''^  and  of  Israelites,"-  and  Israel  is  called 
God's  son.*'^  Occasionally,  though  not  often,  the 
word  **  Father  "  may  have  application  to  individual 
Israelites,  but  such  passages  are  usually  only  com- 
parisons at  most,''^  and  furthermore  always  are 
based  upon  the  covenant  relation  to  Jehovah  through 

68  Matt.   13  :  33. 

"OMark  2:  21,  22. 

««  Luke  22  :  27. 

"  Deut.  32  :  6  ;  .Ter.  3  :  4,  19  ;  31  :  9. 

02  Isa.  G3  :  IG  ;  G4  :  8. 

03  Exod.  4  :  22  ;  Ilosea  11:1;  Ps.  89  :  27. 
0*  Deut.  1  :  31  ;  8  :  5  ;  Ps.  103  :  13. 


14     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 


membership  in  the  nation.  In  the  Old  Testament 
God's  Fatherhood  was  a  general  conception  of  his 
special  interest  in  Israel,  and  brought  only  a  sense 
of  national  privilege.  Jesus  gave  new  content  to 
the  word. 

2.  "  Father  "  was  Jesus'  exclusive  term  for  God. 
He  did  not  use  philosophical  terms,  such  as  the  In- 
finite, the  Absolute,  the  Great  First  Cause.  Nor  did 
he  employ  any  legal  names  for  God,  such  as  Judge 
or  Law-giver.  Nor  did  he  use  any  of  the  terms  con- 
nected with  the  sacrificial  ritual  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  describe  God.  Everywhere  and  always  God 
is  "  Father."  We  cannot  be  grateful  enough  to  him 
for  taking  the  thought  of  God  away  from  the  law- 
court,  and  from  the  bloody  sacrifices  of  the  Temple, 
and  from  the  fogs  of  philosophy,  and  putting  it  at 
the  hearthstone  of  the  home.  All  men  have  been 
children,  members  of  homes.  In  shifting  the  idea  of 
God  to  the  home  Jesus  made  provision  for  a  univer- 
sal understanding  of  the  nature  of  God. 

If  the  social  condition  of  women  in  the  first  cen- 
tury of  our  era  had  been  what  it  now  is  in  America, 
Jesus  probably  would  have  made  use  of  the  mother's 
love  and  care  to  describe  some  attributes  of  God. 
The  Old  Testament  has  several  passages  that  use  the 
mother-love  to  portray  the  love  of  Jehovah.  "  As 
one  whom  his  mother  comforteth,  so  will  I  comfort 
you.''«^  "  Can  a  woman  forget  her  nursing  child? 
Yet  will  I  not  forget  thee." ««  There  is  none  in  the 
New  Testament  which  refers  to  mother-love  as  an 
illustration  of  the  divine  affection. 

God's  nature  is  paternal.  He  is  parental.  The 
word  "  Father  "  best  describes  the  love,  providence, 

<»  Isa.  66  :  13.  «« Isa.  49  :  15. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  15 

compassion,  and  kindness  of  the  divine  Being.  Jesus 
used  the  idea  of  father  as  the  basis  for  deductions. 
The  heathen  do  not  conceive  of  God  as  a  father. 
Therefore  they  are  anxious  about  food  and  raiment, 
but  those  who  realize  the  parental  nature  of  God 
should  have  no  anxiety  over  such  matters."  He 
declared  that  God  can  never  tantalize  us,  that  the 
disposition  of  a  father  to  give  food  to  his  children 
is  the  measure  of  God's  willingness  "  to  give  good 
things  to  them  that  ask  him."^^  We  cannot  fail  to 
notice  the  tremendous  implications  of  the  words 
"  How  much  more !  "  ""^  The  market-price  of  spar- 
rows in  Jesus'  day  was  two  for  one  farthing."^*^  But 
if  a  poor  widow  expected  a  guest  for  lunch  and  gave 
the  butcher  two  farthings,  expecting  in  return  four 
sparrows,  she  received  five.  "  Are  not  five  sparrows 
sold  for  two  farthings,  and  not  one  of  them  is  for- 
gotten before  God."  ^^  "  And  one  of  them  shall  not 
fall  on  the  ground  without  your  Father."  ^^  j^  other 
words,  the  Father  attended  the  funeral  of  the  extra 
bird  which  the  butcher  gave  to  the  woman  who 
wished  two  farthings'  worth  of  sparrows.  And  each 
of  us,  in  the  Father's  esteem,  is  worth  more  than 
many  sparrows. 

(a)  God  was  the  Father  of  Jesus.    The  beautiful 
story  of  the  twelve-year-old  boy  who  answered  his 
seeking  parents  with  the  question,  "  Wist  ye  not  that 
I  must  be  in  my  Father's  house?  "  "  shows  his  unique 
consciousness  of  his  relation  to  God.    Always  in  his 
prayers^*  and  in  his  teaching  he  referred  to  God  as 
his  Father.    His  Father  did  not  leave  him  in  loneli- 
er Matt.  6  :  26-33.  "  Luke  12  :  6. 
«•  Matt.  7  :  8-11.  "  Matt.  10  :  29. 
6«  TToo-oj  fiaWov.                   "  Luke  2  :  49. 
•0  Matt.  10  :  29.                 '*  Luke  10  :  21  ;  22  :  42. 


16     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

ness,'^  showed  his  Son  what  he  was  doing,^^  told  him 
what  to  say,'^  and  blessed  him  with  an  intimate  com- 
panionship"^ unbreakable  by  any  experiences  of 
life.^^    He  and  his  Father  were  one.^^ 

(b)  He  is  the  Father  of  disciples  of  Jesus.  Those 
who  become  followers  of  Jesus  share  in  the  blessings 
of  his  filial  relation  to  God.^'  To  this  blessed  reality 
witnesses  the  great  prayer  he  taught  his  disciples,^- 
and  God's  providential  care  for  trusting  Christians.*^ 
We  should  not  be  anxious  about  material  things  pre- 
cisely because  God  is  our  Father.  "  We  cannot  drift 
beyond  his  love  and  care." 

(c)  God  is  in  a  real  sense  the  Father  of  all  men. 
The  "  crown  and  pearl  "  of  all  his  parables,^*  usually 
referred  to  as  the  story  of  "  The  Prodigal  Son,"  is 
really  the  story  of  "The  Waiting  Father."  The 
three  beautiful  stories  in  Luke  15  are  Jesus'  defense 
of  eating  with  publicans  and  sinners.  He  said  he 
was  doing  only  what  a  shepherd  does  when  he  seeks 
a  lost  sheep,  or  a  woman  who  sweeps  the  house  to  find 
a  lost  coin,  or  a  father  who  daily  watches  for  the 
return  of  a  wayward  son.  The  point  of  all  three 
parables  is  that  it  is  natural  to  seek  our  own  lost 
property,  precisely  because  it  belongs  to  us.  Jesus 
was  with  these  social  outcasts  because  they  were  his 
Father's  wayward  children.  Men  can  never  go  so 
far  away  into  sin  that  God's  heart  does  not  follow 
them  with  solicitude.  Indeed,  in  this  parable  the 
phrase,  *'  while  he  was  yet  a  great  way  off,"  ^^  has 

»»  John  8  :  16,  29.  "  john  1  :  12. 

"  John  5  :  20.  82  ^att.  6  :  9. 

"  John  8  :  28  ;  12  :  49  ;  14  :  10.  s^  Matt.  6  :  8. 

"  Matt.  11  :  27.  s*  Luke  15  :  11-32. 

'^  Luke  23:6.  85<,AutoO  fiaKpav  ane\oi>TO^." 

80  John  10  :  30. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  17 

been  literally  translated  "  While  he  was  holding 
himself  off."  While  the  boy  was  walking  back  and 
forth  in  front  of  the  house,  going  some  distance  on 
either  side  of  the  door,  his  father  saw  the  hesitating 
steps  of  the  penitent  soul,  not  yet  wholly  able  to 
overcome  misgivings,  and  rushed  out  of  the  house  to 
claim  his  own  child.  When  Jesus  talked  to  the 
woman  by  Jacob's  well,  he  told  her  that  "  the 
Father "  seeks  worshipers  whose  spirits  adore  in 
reality  and  not  in  form  alone.^*^  He  meant  to  tell 
that  woman  of  many  husbands  that  God  was  her 
Father,  and  sought  her.  In  his  divine  philippic 
against  phariseeism  he  spoke  to  the  multitude,  as 
well  as  to  his  disciples,  and  to  both  he  said :  "  Call 
none  your  Father  upon  earth ;  for  one  is  your  Father, 
which  is  in  heaven."  ^"^  The  divine  disposition  toward 
all  men  was  such  as  to  be  aptly  described  by  the  word 
"  Father." 

Paul  had  the  same  idea  when  he  quoted  a  heathen 
poet  approvingly,  "  For  we  are  also  his  offspring."  ^^ 
James  declared  that  "  Every  good  gift  and  every  per- 
fect gift  is  from  above,  and  cometh  down  from  the 
Father  of  lights."  ^^  The  writer  of  Hebrews  used 
paternal  discipline  to  express  the  training  that  God 
gives  us :  "  Shall  we  not  much  rather  be  in  subjection 
to  the  Father  of  spirits,  and  live?  "^^ 

It  does  not  at  all  affect  the  supremacy  of  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  that  Paul  used  the  word  "  adoption  " 
derived  from  the  Roman  law  of  his  day.^^  The 
civilization  of  his  time  was  such  as  to  make  that 
word  particularly  intelligible  to  his  readers.     The 

8«  John  4  :  21-23.  s^  James  1  :  17. 

"  Matt.  23  :  9.  ■»«  Heb.  12:9. 

s8  Acts  17  :  28.  »»  Rom.  9:4;  Gal.  4:5;  Eph.  1  :  5. 


18     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

point  of  his  use  of  the  word  is  that  even  this  process 
of  Roman  law  illustrates  the  great  reality  that  we 
can  have  the  spirit  that  cries,  "  Abba,  Father."  ^^  j^ 
is  his  conception  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God  that  he 
wished  to  express. 

The  Christian  faith  regards  all  persons  as  in  some 
sense  the  children  of  God.  In  the  Old  Testament 
the  conception  of  sonship  was  national,  and  was  in 
concord  with,  if  not  derived  from,  the  great  concep- 
tion of  God's  marriage  to  Israel.^^  The  nation  was 
composed  of  his  children.  In  their  sins  they  were 
"  children  in  whom  is  no  faith."  ^^  But  this  idea  of 
sonship  to  God  Jesus  developed  and  brought  into  the 
realm  of  individual  faith.  "As  many  as  received 
him,  to  them  gave  he  the  right  to  become  the  sons  of 
God."  ^^  The  peacemakers  would  earn  the  name 
"  Children  of  God."  ^^  Those  who  love  their  enemies 
were  to  be  "  the  children  of  the  Father  who  is  in 
heaven."  ^^  The  Kingdom  of  God  in  which  men  are 
the  sons  of  the  Father  was  to  be  open  to  all  nations,^^ 
and  also  to  all  sinners.^^  This  sonship  consists  in 
moral  likeness  to  God,  in  ethical  oneness  with  the 
heavenly  Father.^^^  It  is  to  be  of  the  same  ethical 
and  spiritual  nature  as  the  relation  which  Jesus 
himself  held  to  his  Father.  Here  is  the  ideal  for 
every  man's  life.  In  all  relations  he  is  to  live  as  a 
child  of  the  heavenly  Father.  He  is  to  take  this  con- 
sciousness of  sonship  into  business,  politics,  social 
life,  and  every  other  realm  he  enters.  The  high  sense 
of  dignity,  privilege,  and  obligation  which  this  con- 

"  Rom.  8  :  15.  "  Matt.  5  :  45. 

o^Ezek.  16.  »8M^att.  8  :  11. 

0*  Deut.  32  :  20.  »»  Matt.  9  :  12,  13. 

05  John  1 :  12.  i«o  John  8  :  33-44. 
w  Matt.  5  :  9. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  19 

ception  of  our  lives  affords  is  never  to  be  absent. 
Jesus  found  a  legal  conception  of  sonship.  He  made 
it  vital  and  spiritual.  With  the  religionists  of  his 
day  God  was  the  Judge,  and  every  act  of  obedience 
had  his  reward.  With  Jesus  God  was  the  Father, 
and  men  are  to  find  the  rewards  of  sonship  in  the 
consciousness  of  it,  in  the  character  it  develops,  and 
in  the  service  that  it  compels.  Jesus  found  a  na- 
tional and  exclusive  idea  of  sonship  to  God.  He 
made  it  universal,  inclusive,  and  spiritual. 

(d)  While  the  ideal  of  Jesus  for  human  society 
was  stated  in  a  term  derived  from  monarchy,  "  the 
kingdom  of  God,"  he  never  allowed  it  to  be  forgotten 
that  this  kingdom  is  the  rule  of  a  loving  Father.^^^ 
The  term  was  used  in  his  day  to  express  the  national 
hope  of  a  social  condition  in  which  the  righteous 
God  would  be  the  real  sovereign.  In  the  mind  of 
Jesus  it  meant  a  state  of  human  society  in  which 
every  person  lives  as  a  child  of  the  heavenly  Father, 
and  therefore  as  brother  and  sister  to  every  human 
being.  Ideally  mankind  is  to  become  the  Father's 
earthly  family. 

3.  Likewise  the  family  furnished  Jesus  with  his 
illustration  of  the  highest  relation  between  men. 
Because  God's  nature  is  paternal  the  new  social 
order  which  Jesus  came  to  establish  was  to  be  fra- 
ternal. Our  Lord  pushed  the  word  "  brother  "  over 
national  and  domestic  boundaries,  which  limited  its 
Old  Testament  use,  and  made  it  the  universal  term 
to  describe  all  human  relations. 

(a)  It  became  the  word  prevailingly  used  for  the 
relation  between  Christians.^^^  xhe  goodly  bond  of 
those  in  the  churches  is  described  as  the  fellowship 

»"  Matt.  13  :  43.  ^02  Matt.  5  :  22-24  ;  23  :  8  :  et  al. 


20     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

of  brethren/«3  Philanthropy,  as  the  word  itself 
means,  is  based  upon  this  brotherhood. ^^^  Those 
who  became  disciples  of  Christ  were  in  a  real  sense 
his  brothers.  Even  after  his  resurrection  he  sent  a 
message  to  his  "  brethren."  ^<^^ 

(b)  Moreover  the  term  was  extended  to  include 
all  mankind.  We  are  all  brethren."^  In  the  august 
description  of  the  last  judgment  Jesus  described 
even  the  heathen  who  did  not  know  him  as  "my 
brethren."  We  must  not  miss  his  use  of  the  expres- 
sion "all  nations."  10^  On  his  lips  idpo^  always  re- 
ferred to  the  Gentiles.108  ^u  nations  will  be  gathered 
before  God,  and  judgment  will  be  according  to  their 
unselfish  ministry  among  themselves,  every  sufferer 
and  needy  person  being  a  "brother"  of  Jesus 
Christ.^o^  The  conception  of  Jesus  was  that  man- 
kind is  God's  family. 

Thus  Jesus  Hfted  the  words  "father"  and 
"  brother  "  from  a  mere  domestic  and  national  use, 
and  made  them  describe  the  manifold  relations  of 
God  and  men.  He  used  the  ideas  that  underlie  the 
family  relations  to  express  the  ethical  and  spiritual 
content  of  the  Christian  faith.  They  were  the  reality 
in  his  personal  life,  and  therefore  gave  form  and 
substance  to  his  teaching.  Every  word  of  our  Lord 
was  spiritual  autobiography.  He  taught  what  he 
was,  and  he  was  what  he  taught.  Every  deed,  utter- 
ance, and  relation  is  a  window  through  which 
streamed  the  light  that  was  within,  and  through 
which  also  we  gaze  into  the  interior  recesses  of  his 
soul.    The  Christian  Faith  is  truly  the  personal  faith 

W3  Luke  22  :  32  ;  Acts  9  :  17  ;  1  Cor.  C  :  G  ;  8  :  13  ;  Col.  4:9. 

i»*  James  2  :  15.  W?  '.  ^^^^^^   ra   idyrj." 

105  Matt.  28  :  10  ;  John  20  :  17.  ^os  Matt.  6  :  32  ;  Mark  10  :  42. 

i«8  Matt.  7  :  3-5.  we  Matt.  25  :  40. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  21 

of  Jesus  himself  reproduced  in  us,  so  far  as  our 
sinful  and  undeveloped  spiritual  natures  will  allow. 

Thus  we  see  how  the  family  made  its  vast  con- 
tribution to  the  Christian  Faith.  Our  Lord  turned 
aside  from  the  monarchy,  which  up  to  his  day  had 
molded  the  conceptions  of  God  and  of  human  rela- 
tions to  him,  and  of  men  and  their  relations.  He 
preserved  all  ideas  of  sovereignty  and  of  dignity 
which  belonged  to  the  thought  of  God  as  king,  and 
men  as  his  subjects,  but  he  paternalized  these  con- 
ceptions. He  entirely  thrust  aside  the  external- 
isms  which  belonged  to  forensic  relations,  and 
displaced  them  with  the  thought  of  the  inner  filial 
and  fraternal  spirit.  That  new  idea  was  to  shape 
all  externalisms.  He  did  not  sew  the  new  family 
cloth  upon  the  old  garment  of  legalism,  nor  would 
he  put  the  new  wine  of  God's  Fatherhood  and  man's 
brotherhood  into  the  skins  of  monarchical  concep- 
tions.^^°  Straight  to  the  family  life  our  Lord  went 
with  an  unflinching  courage  that  dared  to  exalt 
humanity's  oldest  and  most  sacred  institution  into 
the  position  of  a  great  parable  of  God's  relation  to 
men,  and  their  relations  to  one  another.  There  is 
profound  significance  in  the  fact  that  the  central 
teachings  of  Jesus  Christ  concerning  God  and  men, 
and  all  their  relations,  were  based  upon  the  family. 
He  would  translate  all  factors  in  religion  into  terms 
that  everybody  could  understand. 

4.  No  part  of  the  Bible  can  be  understood  without 
proper  regard  for  the  historical  situation  in  which  it 
was  produced.  This  is  strikingly  apparent  when  we 
study  Paul's  teaching  about  the  family.  While  Paul 
in  his  messages  to  the  heathen  world  and  to  the  early 

"OAfaik  2  :  21,  22. 


22     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

church  used  the  family  relations  as  vehicles  of  the 
new  religion,  he  nevertheless  shared  the  Messianic 
expectations  of  his  time.  In  his  earliest  letters, 
those  to  the  Thessalonians,  the  family  is  ignored. 
The  only  allusion  to  any  event  that  could  be  consid- 
ered as  domestic  is  the  comparison  of  the  impending 
world  cataclysm  to  the  suddenness  with  which  birth- 
pangs  come  to  the  mother."^  About  four  years  later 
he  wrote  to  the  Corinthians  urging  celibacy.  While 
he  introduced  his  comments  by  stating  that  he  gave 
his  own  judgment,  and  did  not  speak  by  command- 
ment of  the  Lord," 2  he  also  said  that  he  thought  he 
had  the  mind  of  the  Spirit. "^  At  that  time  he  con- 
templated a  destruction  of  the  existing  social  order 
which  would  attend  the  return  of  Jesus  to  this 
world."*  He  therefore  advised  marriage  only  to 
avoid  the  peril  of  incontinence.  He  said  it  was  bet- 
ter that  young  ladies  should  not  marry,  and  declared 
that  the  unmarried  could  care  more  for  the  things 
of  the  Lord."^  Much  later,  near  the  close  of  his  life 
he  wrote,  "  I  will  therefore  that  the  younger  women 
marry,  bear  children,  guide  the  house,  give  none 
occasion  to  the  adversary  for  their  railing."  "^  Hus- 
bands are  to  love  their  wives  "  as  Christ  also  loved 
the  church.""^  Yet,  though  he  had  some  years  pre- 
viously announced  the  ideal  that  in  Christ  "  there  is 
neither  male  nor  female,""^  he  still  held  to  the  head- 
ship of  the  husband  over  the  wife."^    The  Pauline 

^^  1  Thess.  5  :  3. 

^'  1  Cor.  7  :  6,  25. 

"3 1  Cor.  7  :  40. 

11*  1  Cor.  7  :  29-31 ;  1  Cor.  16  :  22,  Maranatha. 

»i»  1  Cor.  7  :  8-40. 

118 1  Tim.  5  :  14. 

^^  Eph.  5  :  25-29. 

"«  Gal.  3  :  28.  ^^  Eph.  5  :  22-24  ;  Col.  3  :  18. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  23 

utterances  must  be  studied  in  the  light  of  modifica- 
tions of  his  views,  due  to  the  delay  of  the  return  of 
Jesus.  If  Paul's  letters  be  arranged  in  chronological 
order  and  studied  with  reference  to  the  subjects  of 
marriage,  and  the  family  life,  and  other  matters 
also,  the  modifications  of  his  views  will  become 
apparent.  When  he  wrote  his  earliest  letters,  he 
expected  Jesus  to  come  and  be  with  him.'^*^  When  he 
wrote  his  second  letter  to  Timothy,  he  expected  to  go 
to  be  with  Jesus.'-'  The  early  Pauline  utterances 
have  been  used  by  some  as  a  basis  of  argument  for 
an  unsympathetic  attitude  toward  the  family  life. 
When,  however,  one  studies  Paul  historically,  the 
development  of  his  ideas  will  be  seen.  There  is  no 
reason  why  modifications  should  not  have  occurred 
during  the  twelve  to  sixteen  years  of  experience  and 
literary  activity.  Only  sane  methods  of  New  Testa- 
ment study  will  yield  wholesome  fruits  to  the  Chris- 
tian faith.  Jesus'  teaching  about  the  family  must 
be  authoritative  for  us.  PauFs  utterances  need  to  be 
contemplated  as  just  indicated. 

III.  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  TRANSFIGURES 
THE  FAMILY 

While  the  family  made  great  contributions  to  the 
Christian  Faith,  it  received  greater  gifts.  Jesus  did 
not  leave  the  family  where  he  found  it.  In  his  use 
of  it  he  transfigured  it.  The  vast  difference  between 
the  Christian  family  today  and  the  Old  Testament 
Hebrew  family  is  due  entirely  to  Jesus  Christ.  The 
soil  of  the  divine  heart  profoundly  affected  the  fam- 
ily flower  and  fruit.     In  its  passage  through  the 

120  1  Thess.  4  :  15-17.       "^  2  Tim.  4  :  6. 


24     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

septum  of  his  soul  all  that  could  not  convey  the  high- 
est spiritual  truth  was  eliminated.  The  boy's  loaves 
and  fishes  in  the  hand  of  Jesus  multiplied/-^  but  the 
family  idea  in  the  heart  of  Jesus  was  transformed 
and  glorified. 

1.  The  Christian  Faith  sanctifies  marriage.  It 
moralized  the  relations  between  the  sexes.  When 
one  turns  from  the  pages  of  classic  Greek  and  Ro- 
man literature  to  those  of  the  New  Testament,  and 
also  to  Christian  sermons,  essays,  and  poetry  con- 
cerning the  general  relations  of  men  and  women, 
especially  in  the  conjugal  life,  it  seems  as  if  the 
word  "  love  "  had  almost  entirely  changed  its  mean- 
jj^g  123  i^  Greece,  **  Almost  all  their  great  men  .  .  . 
were  impure."  ^^^  When  Greek  influences  entered 
Rome,  "  domestic  chastity  and  morality  almost 
wholly  disappeared."  No  more  stupendous  change 
in  the  social  order  has  been  wrought  than  that  by 
the  Christian  faith  concerning  the  relation  of  the 
sexes.  Not  yet  has  the  church  of  Christ,  much  less 
the  world  at  large,  reached  the  single  standard  of 
Jesus,  the  same  for  both  sexes.^^s  r^j^jg  relation  be- 
tween the  sexes  seems  to  be  the  one  exception  he 
made  to  his  habit  of  treating  social  conditions  only 
by  uttering  general  principles.  In  this  region  his 
teaching  is  specific. 

The  origin  of  the  family  is  in  marriage.  The 
teaching  of  Jesus  gave  the  death-blow  to  polyg- 
amy,^-*^  which  had  been  tolerated  and  practised  in 

122  John  6  :  9,  13. 

"3  See  "  Gesta  Christi,"  by  Charles  Loring  Brace,  Chapters  III,  IV. 
Also  Uhlhorn's  *'  Conflict  of  Christianity  with  Heathenism,"  Chapter  II, 
Section  2. 

124  Uhlhorn,  op.  cit.  The  whole  section  should  be  read  for  a  picture 
of  heathen  ideas. 

1-5  Matt.  5  :  27-30.  i2«  Matt.  19  :  H,  6. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  25 

Old  Testament  times.  God  is  the  Creator  of  all  life. 
Human  beings  are  his  agents  in  the  perpetuation  of 
physical  life.  All  forms  of  sexual  unchastity  are 
therefore  criminal  waste  by  trustees  of  divine  life, 
are  sequestrations  of  divine  property,  violations  of 
heavenly  trust.  While  in  the  Old  Testament  mar- 
riage was  the  figure  frequently  used  by  the  prophets 
of  the  relation  of  Jehovah  and  the  nation,  in  the  New 
Testament  it  is  the  figure  of  the  union  of  Christ  and 
his  church.^-^  Marriage  is  essentially  holy.  There 
is  no  New  Testament  ground  for  regarding  it  as  a 
sacrament.  Nevertheless,  the  sacramental  concep- 
tion comes  nearer  to  the  Christian  view  of  the  holy 
relation  than  much  of  the  prevailing  Protestant 
practise.  Husband  and  wife  in  the  home,  and  before 
the  world,  should  be  the  exponents  of  the  love  that 
exhibits  God's  creative  function,  and  of  the  unity, 
affection,  and  service  existing  between  Christ  and 
the  church.  There  can  be  no  more  sacred  or  effective 
parable  of  the  relation  of  the  living  Christ  to  his 
earthly  disciples  than  husband  and  wife  realizing 
the  ideals  of  the  Christian  Faith  concerning  mar- 
riage. Think  of  Paul  being  compelled  to  write  to 
those  recently  redeemed  from  heathenism,  "  Hus- 
bands, love  your  wives,  and  be  not  bitter  against 
them."  ^-« 

Christian  ideals  so  highly  exalt  marriage  that  it 
should  be  entered  into  only  for  the  holiest  reasons. 
Jesus  teaches  that  marriage  can  be  broken  only  by  a 
sin  which  by  its  very  nature  destroys  the  union  of 
souls  and  bodies  it  was  intended  to  exhibit.  There 
is  urgent  need  today  for  strenuous  protest  against 

^^  Eph.  5  :  23-31. 
'28  Col.  3  :  19. 

c 


26     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

the  degradation  of  this  most  sacred  human  relation- 
ship. Conjugal  alliances  are  sometimes  formed  for 
physical,  financial,  and  social  reasons.  Our  divorce 
courts  dissolve  a  large  percentage  of  marriages. 
Moreover,  there  are  separations  and  desertions  that 
never  reach  the  courts,  and  cannot  be  stated  in  sta- 
tistics. And  there  is  reason  to  fear  that  not  all  cases 
of  unfaithfulness  come  to  the  light.  If  the  home 
fails,  Church  and  State  alike  are  doomed.  There  is 
not  time  here  to  describe  the  divorce  evil,  nor  to 
discuss  the  limitations  our  Lord  puts  upon  it,'-^  nor 
the  lack  of  agreement  concerning  the  causes  for  it 
as  exhibited  in  the  various  statutes  of  our  different 
States.  The  Christian  Faith  yet  faces  the  gigantic 
task  of  shaping  our  social  ideals  and  practises  con- 
cerning marriage.  We  cannot  hope  that  the  world 
will  feel  the  holiness  and  power  of  Christian  ideals 
until  ministers  and  church-members  themselves 
come  to  know  and  be  faithful  to  Christ's  ideals. 

2.  The  Christian  Faith  gives  spiritual  meaning 
to  parenthood.  It  is  vastly  more  than  a  convention- 
ally decent  way  of  sustaining  the  human  species. 
Here  also  Jesus  transfigured  a  normal  human  ex- 
perience and  made  it  shine  with  the  gleams  of  heav- 
enly messages. 

(a)  Parenthood  is  a  means  of  discovering  God. 
In  his  letter  to  the  Ephesians,'^^  Paul  used  a  remark- 
able expression :  "  For  this  cause  I  bow  my  knees 
unto  the  Father  from  whom  every  Fatherhood  in 
heaven  and  on  earth  is  named."  One  cannot  escape 
the  play  upon  the  words  father  and  fatherhood.^^^ 

^  Matt.  5  :  32  ;  19  :  9  ;  Mark  10  :  11,  12  ;  Luke  16  :  18. 
i«>  Eph.  3  :  14,  15. 

181    «'  Upb?   TO*'   naTepa    .    ,    .    naaa   naTpia." 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  27 

Every  fatherhood  is  of  the  nature  of  God's  father- 
hood. He  would  not  let  mankind  multiply  as  the 
beasts  of  the  field,  or  the  fishes  of  the  sea,  or  the  fowl 
of  the  air,  miscellaneously.  He  melts  two  human 
hearts  in  love,  lays  the  fruit  of  that  union  against 
the  mother's  breast  and  in  the  father's  arms,  and 
thus  awakens  the  parental  feeling.  This  is  the  high- 
est interpretation  of  his  own  eternal  parenthood. 
The  holiest  heart  on  earth  is  a  mother's,  and  the 
right  kind  of  a  father's  soul  closely  approaches  it. 
Every  parent  in  his  love,  care,  training,  and  provi- 
dence for  his  own  offspring  reproduces  within  him- 
self something  of  the  spiritual  nature  of  God's 
divine  parenthood.  Thus  God  made  provision  for 
the  universal  discovery  of  himself  through  the  proc- 
esses that  perpetuate  the  human  species.  The  pos- 
sibility of  the  universal  knowledge  of  God  cannot 
be  denied,  since  parental  hearts  may  look  into  them- 
selves and  find  in  their  holiest,  tenderest,  and  most 
sacrificial  experiences  the  message  of  God's  father- 
hood. Jesus  told  us  that  in  those  periods  of  our 
love's  most  intense  yearning  over  our  children,  and 
also  in  the  unfailing  consciousness  of  our  parental 
relation  to  them,  we  might  whisper  to  ourselves 
about  God's  love  for  us,  "  How  much  more."  ^^^  Lean, 
indeed,  are  our  parental  souls  if  we  do  not  read  the 
divine  story  of  the  heavenly  Father's  interest  in 
every  human  being  when  we  feel  our  own  holy  and 
inexpressible  love  for  our  offspring,  our  highest  de- 
sires for  their  development  and  culture,  and  exercise 
continual,  providential  care  for  the  physical,  mental, 
and  moral  welfare  of  our  sons  and  daughters.  This 
conception  was  wholly  absent  from  the  Hebrew  idea 

is^Matt.  7:  11. 


28     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

of  the  family.  Heathenism  never  dreamed  of  it.  It 
seems  very  strange  to  us,  but  it  must  have  been  nec- 
essary, according  to  the  standards  of  the  day,  that 
Paul  should  write  to  Titus,  "Teach  the  young  women 
to  love  their  children."  ^^^  But  if  we  realize  what 
motherhood  spiritually  meant  to  Paul,  and  that  these 
young  women  were  being  emancipated  from  heathen 
conceptions,  it  will  not  seem  startling  that  he  told 
the  young  preacher  to  educate  these  young  mothers 
in  the  love  of  their  offspring  in  order  that  their  own 
hearts  might  come  to  understand  God. 

(b)  Parenthood  should  interpret  God  to  children, 
not  only  by  religious  teaching,  but  by  the  quality  of 
parental  life.  Jesus  insisted  that  parental  willing- 
ness to  minister  to  children  and  the  inability  of 
parental  love  to  mock  offspring  is  the  parable  of  our 
heavenly  Father's  eagerness  to  serve  humanity.  God 
cannot  tantalize  mankind  by  whims  and  caprices, 
and  will  not  mock  the  needs  and  expectations  of 
those  whom  he  has  created. ^^*  Jesus  bids  us  know 
the  divine  attitude  toward  mankind  from  our  pa- 
rental dispositions.  "  How  much  more !  "  The  rela- 
tion of  parents  to  children  is  the  domestic  interpreta- 
tion of  our  heavenly  Father's  love.^^^ 

At  one  of  the  New  England  camps  a  father  visited 
his  son  about  to  sail  for  France  to  take  part  in  the 
World  War.  Just  before  their  separation  they  drew 
aside  from  all  others.  The  boy  said  to  his  father: 
"  We  are  all  alone.  Have  you  anything  to  say  to 
me?  "  The  father  answered,  "  Only  this,  remember 
that  I  love  you  and  trust  you."    The  boy  reached  out 

.  ^^  Titus  2  :  4. 
13*  Matt.  7:  7-11. 
135  See  III,  2,  (a)  ut  sup.  on  Eph.  3:  14,15. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  29 

his  arm  and  put  it  about  his  father's  body,  hugged 
him  close  and  said :  "  I  shall  always  honor  your  love 
and  trust.  I  thank  you  for  all  you  have  done  and 
have  been  to  me.  I  shall  never  say  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  nor  hear  God  called  Father  without  thinking 
of  you.  You  have  interpreted  God  to  me."  May  we 
not  well  ask  whether  there  could  have  been  any 
higher  function  of  fatherhood,  or  a  more  successful 
paternal  relation  than  to  have  produced  such  a  say- 
ing from  a  son  about  to  face  the  experience  of  army 
life,  and  possibly  death. 

(c)  Parenthood  provides  spiritual  opportunity  to 
children.  Jesus  rebuked  his  disciples  when  they  for- 
bade parents  to  bring  children  to  him.'^^  Paul  told 
parents  to  bring  up  their  children  in  the  nurture  and 
admonition  of  the  Lord,  and  not  to  provoke  them  to 
wrath.^"  The  cultivation  of  a  good  temper  in  the 
child,  and  the  opening  of  his  eyes  to  see  the  spiritual 
meaning  of  home  life  is  a  duty  that  the  Christian 
Faith  imposes  upon  all  parents.  Here  life  must  illus- 
trate words,  or  the  door  of  opportunity  will  be  closed 
to  the  child.  The  Forerunner  was  "  to  turn  the 
hearts  of  the  fathers  to  the  children." ^"^^  The  embar- 
rassment of  parents  in  talking  to  children  about  re- 
ligious matters  is  often  due  to  discrepancy  between 
life  and  lip.  Yet  how  many  have  crowned  parental 
ministry  with  the  testimony  that  father's  prayers 
and  life,  and  mother-love  and  character  have  led 
them  to  the  Christian  life.  When  our  children  walk 
in  truth  we  may  well  be  congratulated.^'^  Parents 
are  expected  to  open  doors  to  their  children  in  social, 
educational,  and  commercial  realms.  Why  not  in  the 

^30  Matt.  19  :  13-15.  ^^  Luke  1  :  17. 

"'  Eph.  6:4;  Col.  3  :  21.  »»>  2  John  4. 


30     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

Christian  region  also?  Who  will  defend  the  idea 
that  opportunity  for  the  child  is  everywhere  obliga- 
tory upon  the  parent,  except  in  religion?  Home 
evangelization  should  be  the  Christian  parents' 
highest  privilege,  as  it  is  their  most  solemn  respon- 
sibility. 

(d)  Parents  are  themselves  enriched  by  virtue  of 
parenthood.  They  are  educated  by  their  children. 
There  are  remote  recesses  of  the  soul  that  can  be 
reached  only  by  baby  fingers.  There  are  heart- 
strings that  make  no  music  until  they  are  swept  by 
the  hand  of  a  child.  There  are  visions  never  awak- 
ened until  one  beholds  his  own  offspring.  There  are 
sacrifices  never  contemplated,  much  less  endured, 
until  parental  love  gives  itself.  Even  after  our  chil- 
dren are  married  and  scattered,  or  when  death  has 
robbed  us  of  their  presence,  we  yet  retain  the  heav- 
enly riches  they  brought  us  in  those  large  expansions 
of  soul,  and  the  sacred  experiences  that  parenthood 
enjoyed.  Our  pain  at  separations  and  our  griefs 
are  the  witnesses  to  our  wealth  of  spirit.  How  often 
children  are  the  bonds  of  conjugal  union  and  joy 
when  otherwise  differences  of  temperament  and  am- 
bition would  destroy  the  married  life.  Often  the 
child  is  the  savior  of  the  home.  Parenthood  is  the 
divine  remedy  for  domestic  selfishness.  It  is  the 
source  of  sympathy  and  sacrifice.  In  our  World 
War  millions  of  persons  whose  sons  and  daughters 
were  given  to  the  conflict  first  came  to  understand 
the  words,  "  God  so  loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his 
gQj^  »»i4o  rpj^g  enrichment  of  life  through  parenthood 
is  the  normal  experience  of  the  home.  The  Christian 
Faith   amplifies    and    intensifies   our    soul    wealth 

"0  John  3:16. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  31 

through  parental  experience.  Every  human  being 
is  broader,  better,  more  spiritual  for  having  been  a 
parent.  The  childless  home  is  incomplete.  The 
childless  are  unfortunate.  If  that  condition  is  de- 
liberate and  purposed,  it  is  wicked. 

Efforts  to  prevent  the  establishment  of  a  family 
due  to  selfish  considerations,  or  to  the  love  of  plea- 
sure, are  condemned  by  the  Christian  Faith.  Appar- 
ently no  way  has  yet  been  found  by  which  public 
remonstrance  against  sins  that  prevent  parenthood 
can  be  made  with  becoming  delicacy.  It  is  not  only 
"  race  suicide,"  as  a  great  American  has  called  it, 
but  moral  suicide  for  any  who  wilfully  shirk  the 
responsibilities  of  parenthood,  or  deliberately  deny 
themselves  its  pleasures  and  educational  values. 

3.  What  the  Christian  faith  has  done  for  mother- 
hood would  take  volumes  to  express.  Beautiful  as 
was  the  motherhood  of  some  Hebrew  women  such 
as  Hannah,^*!  and  even  Rizpah,^*^  ^j^^  Jochebed,^" 
and  Mary,^**  and  Elizabeth,^*^  the  glorification  of 
motherhood  by  the  Christian  Faith  has  so  exalted 
it  in  the  hearts  of  countless  millions  that  every  day 
is  mother's  day.  Jesus  Christ  has  put  a  halo  about 
the  brow  of  mother,  jeweled  her  fingers  with  holy 
ministries,  made  her  bosom  the  sweetest,  softest 
pillow  on  earth,  given  music  to  her  footsteps,  and 
made  her  soul  the  holiest  place  this  side  the  throne 
of  God.  Mothers  would  still  have  been  loved  had 
he  not  come,  but  now  every  true  son  and  daughter 
canonizes  the  Christian  mother.  At  her  knee  we  say 
our  first  prayers,  and  from  her  lips  first  hear  the 

"1  1  Sam.  1.  1"  Luke  2  :  46-55. 

"»  2  Sam.  3:7;  21  :  8-11.  »»  Luke  2  :  25. 

"3  Exod.  2:2,  3. 


32     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 


name  of  God  mentioned.  It  is  her  sweet  voice  that 
sings  us  songs  about  Jesus.  It  is  her  unselfish  hand 
that  soothes  our  troubles.  It  is  her  imperishable 
faith  in  us,  stedfast  when  all  other  has  vanished, 
that  becomes  God's  redemptive  power.  And  when 
her  form  is  laid  away,  the  world  for  us  has  lost  com- 
fort and  power  that  can  never  be  replaced.  Because 
Jesus  had  a  mother,  loved,  served,  and  cared  for 
her,^*^  and  because  of  his  teachings,  the  Christian 
Faith  has  exalted  maternity  as  mankind's  supreme 
physical  experience,  and  has  extolled  its  glory  in 
countless  sermons,  poems,  and  memorials. 

4.  The  Christian  Faith  exalts  filial  life.  Jesus 
reaffirmed  the  commandment  "  Honor  thy  father  and 
thy  mother,"  ^*^  but  into  the  word  honor  he  put  a  new 
content,  namely,  the  conception  that  filial  reverence 
makes  its  own  contribution  to  the  spiritual  signifi- 
cance of  the  family.  We  are  God's  children.  Our 
filial  life  is  the  parable  of  our  relation  to  our  heav- 
enly Father.  In  the  midst  of  heathen  unfilial  dis- 
respect Paul  urged  children  to  obey  their  parents, 
for  this  is  well  pleasing  unto  the  Lord.^**  This  rev- 
erence was  not  to  be  a  mere  matter  of  youth,  but  was 
to  continue  through  life.  How  scathing  is  Jesus' 
denunciation  of  those  who  would  set  aside  filial  duty 
by  "  corban."!*^  There  can  be  no  honor  paid  to  God 
by  a  gift  that  prevents  us  from  ministering  to  the 
needs,  comfort,  and  happiness  of  those  who  brought 
us  into  the  world,  gave  unstinted  care  to  our  early 
days,  and  are  God's  largest  factors  in  making  us 
what  we  become.  If  parental  love  reveals  to  fathers 
and  mothers  the  divine  affection  of  the  heavenly 

i^«  John  19  :  25-27.  "^  Eph.  6:1,2. 

"^  Mark  10  :  19.  "»  Mark  7  :  9-13. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  33 

Parent  for  his  earthly  children,  no  less  would  proper 
filial  reverence  in  the  Christian  family  show  parents 
their  own  normal  relation  to  God.  The  love,  obe- 
dience, confidence,  and  fellowship  that  all  parents 
seek  from  their  children  will  become  the  daily  par- 
able of  parental  ambition  Godward.  The  Christian 
Faith  regarding  the  family  enables  sons  and  daugh- 
ters to  make  their  specific  contribution  to  the  re- 
ligious meaning  of  the  home. 

5.  The  Christian  Faith  has  brought  the  home 
under  the  exclusive  sivay  of  love.  In  the  Hebrew 
family  there  doubtless  must  have  been  love,  yet  the 
binding  power  of  the  home  had  in  it  elements  of 
force  and  selfishness.  The  Christian  Faith  has  ban- 
ished these  from  the  ideal  home.  The  members  of 
the  Christian  family  are  in  no  sense  property  of  the 
head  of  the  house.  No  despotism  nor  exploitation 
is  permissible.  We  cannot  take  the  Old  Testament 
family  as  a  model.  Such  homes  as  those  of  Abra- 
ham, Jacob,  and  David  would  not  be  tolerated  in  a 
Christian  church  today.  The  Christian  Faith  builds 
the  home  on  love  exclusively,  and  depends  on  the 
power  of  affection.  Unselfish  service  is  the  ideal 
for  every  member  of  the  family.  Fidelity  is  based 
upon  union  of  hearts.  No  more  complete  transfigu- 
ration has  ever  taken  place  than  that  of  the  home 
because  of  the  Christian  Faith. 

The  New  Testament  gives  us  no  picture  of  a  Chris- 
tian home.  The  reasons  are  not  obscure.  The  new 
faith  was  struggling  to  establish  itself,  and  Jesus 
predicted  a  division  of  families  in  the  process.^^'^ 
Moreover,  the  early  Christians  were  expecting  the 
existing  social  order  to  be  demolished,  and  a  new  one 

»»«  Matt.  10  :  35.  36. 


34     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

to  be  established  at  the  parousia,  and  no  existing 
social  institution  arrested  their  attention.  Even 
Paul,  as  we  have  seen,  advised  against  marriage,^^^ 
the  only  way  to  establish  a  home.  The  New  Testa- 
ment books  did  not  deal  with  conditions  in  a  settled 
Christian  civilization,  but  with  situations  they 
thought  would  be  immediately  changed.  Neverthe- 
less, the  Christian  ideals  for  personal  character  and 
social  relations  have  dominated  our  homes  far  more 
than  commerce,  or  the  state,  or  any  other  institution. 
Millions  of  Christian  homes,  and  countless  books, 
poems,  and  persons  bear  ample  testimony  to  the 
exclusive  sway  of  love  in  the  family  as  the  ideal  in 
all  Christian  lands.  At  the  beginning  of  this  lecture 
we  had  occasion  to  note  that  the  Hebrew  language 
had  no  word  equivalent  to  our  word  "  family."  We 
must  now  note  that  the  Greek  language  had  no  such 
word;  1^2  nor  the  Latin.^^^  Originally  the  Latin 
familia,  from  which  our  word  family  is  derived, 
meant  the  servants  in  a  household.  The  ideal  of 
the  exclusive  sway  of  love  has  made  even  our  En- 
glish word  "  family  *'  to  become  almost  a  Christian 
term,  certainly  one  without  parallel  or  synonym  in 
any  ancient  tongue. 

6.  We  have  already  alluded  ^^*  to  the  family  idea 
as  the  ultimate  conception  of  7nanMnd's  relation  to 
God,  and  of  the  relation  of  men  to  one  another. 
That  is  the  kingdom  of  God.  Today  we  seldom  think 
of  social  relations  in  terms  of  monarchy,  but  rather 
of  mankind  as  a  vast  family,  and  of  the  heavenly 
Father  as  its  head  by  virtue  of  his  holiness  and  love. 

"*  1  Cor.  7  ;  see  also  Sec.  Ill,  1,  of  this  lecture. 
^^^  See  oiKia,  ot«o?,  otKeios,  oiKtaKo?  ==Heb.  heth. 
^^^  Domua. 
^"Sec.  II,  3,  (a). 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  35 

For  the  realization  of  this  family  idea  in  world  life 
the  church  itself  exists.  The  historical  evolution  of 
government  from  monarchical  to  democratic  forms 
has  made  a  place  for  this  Christian  conception  of 
humanity.  It  is  yet  far  from  realization.  Amid  the 
present  chaos,  race  prejudice,  and  international 
gropings  the  need  for  this  conception  of  mankind 
must  be  met  by  those  who  hold  our  precious  faith. 
Not  the  least  of  the  triumphs  of  our  holy  faith  is  the 
substitution  of  the  family  idea  for  the  monarchical 
as  the  noblest  conception  of  mankind's  highest  rela- 
tions. 

IV.  THE  MESSAGES  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN 
FAITH  ABOUT  THE  FAMILY 

Such  being  the  brilliant  transfiguration  of  the 
family  by  the  Christian  Faith,  what  messages  should 
it  send  to  the  world?  Its  utterances  must  grow  out 
of  itself.    Its  vitality  shapes  its  words. 

1.  The  Christian  Faith  concerning  the  family 
should  vigorously  propagate  itself.  It  must  keep 
itself  constantly  before  the  world.  Many  concep- 
tions prevailing  in  homes  connected  with  Christian 
churches  need  to  be  corrected  and  clarified.  Our 
pulpits  must  tell  our  families  their  vast  spiritual 
significance.  However  beautiful  may  be  natural 
family  aflfection,  the  entrance  of  Christian  ideals 
will  bring  new  illumination,  add  fresh  power  to 
homes,  and  enrich  domestic  life.  Our  problems  of 
evangelization  would  be  much  simplified  if  Christian 
families  in  our  parishes  tried  honestly  to  exemplify 
Jesus'  teachings  in  their  homes.  The  minister  has 
a  golden  opportunity  to  let  two  souls  at  the  time  of 


36     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

marriage  know  the  divine  significance  of  their  act. 
When  the  home  is  gladdened  and  sanctified  by  birth 
there  is  another  open  door  for  the  pastor.  Why  not 
enter  with  the  gospel  of  the  spiritual  meaning  of 
parenthood?  No  empty  ceremony  could  approach 
in  power  the  minister's  intelligent  appeal  to  the 
hearts  that  feel  their  first  parental  ecstasies.  As 
families  grow  the  pastor  finds  his  best  opportunity 
to  interpret  to  both  parents  and  children  the  holy 
parable  of  their  home  life.  He  can  reveal  to  parents 
their  priesthood  to  which  they  are  ordained  of  God 
by  virtue  of  parenthood.  He  can,  with  parental 
help,  teach  the  children  the  Christian  meaning  of 
their  lives,  train  them  for  the  higher  meaning  of 
their  home  lives,  and  prepare  them  to  become  exam- 
ples of  brotherhood  in  the  larger  relations  of  life. 
Is  the  average  pastor  trying  to  develop  Christian 
homes?  Here  is  a  field  for  pastors  that  would  yield 
great  harvests  for  the  church  school,  the  church- 
membership,  and  for  world  betterment.  What  are 
our  deacons  doing  for  this  desirable  result?  Their 
function  according  to  the  New  Testament  is  spir- 
itual. Is  their  office  today  much  more  than  an  eccle- 
siastical ornament?  Institutionalized  religion  in 
churches,  Sunday  schools,  and  young  people's  socie- 
ties is  vastly  better  than  no  religion  at  all.  But  re- 
ligion domesticated  in  homes  will  produce  personal 
and  social  results  far  exceeding  those  of  agencies 
external  to  the  home. 

But  if  our  Christian  homes  are  yet  at  such  a  lam- 
entable distance  from  these  ideals,  what  shall  be 
said  of  homes  where  a  believer  and  an  unbeliever 
are  unequally  yoked  together,  or  those  where  Christ 
has  not  entered  at  all  ?    What  are  the  fruits  that  our 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  37 


beloved  America  has  reaped  from  such  homes?  Alas 
that  some  of  these  results  also  come  from  any  homes 
connected  with  our  churches !  Variant  divorce  laws 
in  our  different  States ;  inadequate  protection  of  the 
welfare  of  children  by  the  state;  diverse  laws  con- 
cerning marriage;  the  disintegrating  tendency  of 
wealth  in  the  home;  the  separating  and  often  de- 
grading passion  for  pleasure ;  the  vision  of  fathers 
devoted  to  money-making  and  recreation  to  such  an 
extent  that  we  have  to  rally  families  in  father-and- 
son  banquets;  the  spectacle  of  mothers  devoted  to 
fashions,  parties,  and  diversions  so  thoroughly  that 
today  the  daughters  seem  to  raise  the  mothers  in- 
stead of  the  mothers  raising  the  daughters — these 
things  suggest  the  appalling  need  for  the  propaga- 
tion of  the  Christian  Faith  concerning  the  family. 
Unless  our  homes  are  Christianized,  the  state,  and 
our  schools  and  churches  must  inevitably  suffer,  and 
our  very  civilization  will  deteriorate. 

2.  The  Christian  Faith  insists  upon  religious  edu- 
cation, which  does  not  mean  the  impartation  of 
dogma,  but  the  unfolding  of  both  the  parental  and 
filial  life  according  to  the  standards  of  Jesus  Christ, 
It  is  sad  to  think  that  many  parents  are  either  in- 
competent through  ignorance,  or  are  so  devoted  to 
other  things  that  they  commit  to  alien  hands  the 
sweetest  privilege  they  could  have,  the  religious  edu- 
cation of  their  children.  Deplorable  as  this  fact  is, 
and  fatal  to  the  highest  home  life  as  persistence  in 
such  a  course  will  inevitably  be,  it  calls  all  the  more 
strongly  for  efficient  church  schools.  These  must 
supplement  the  home.  They  should  not  supersede  it. 
The  days  when  Timothy  was  educated  at  the  knees 
of    his    mother    and    grandmother    have    largely 


38     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

passed.^55  Children  are  hurried  off  to  Sunday  school 
where  they  go  in  many  cases  reluctantly.  Their 
spiritual  lives  are  put  in  the  care  of  ministers,  too 
often  spoken  of  as  being  "  hired,"  to  make  Christians 
out  of  sadly  neglected  boys  and  girls  that  come  from 
supposedly  Christian  homes.  Their  religious  wel- 
fare is  entrusted  to  teachers  who  fortunately  for 
the  most  part  have  a  deep  interest  in  discharging 
their  duties.  But  no  stranger  can  so  love  a  child  as 
a  parent.  Parents  seek  to  do  this  holiest  of  all  nor- 
mally parental  work  by  ministerial  or  educational 
proxies.  The  condition  has  become  critical.  Or- 
ganized training  for  teachers  is  rightly  insisted 
upon.  But,  all  this  effort  is  an  attempt  by  those  who 
have  at  heart  the  welfare  of  children  to  supply  the 
deficiencies  of  the  home.  Is  it  not  true  as  Bushnell 
said  that  children  in  a  Christian  home  should  "  grow 
up  Christians,  and  never  know  themselves  as  being 
otherwise"?  Parents  are  exhorted  to  raise  their 
children  in  the  full  rounded  culture  of  mind  and 
morals  that  the  religion  of  Jesus  requires,  with 
such  exhortation  as  he  approves.^^^  Why  should 
a  home,  or  a  church-school,  feel  the  obligation 
to  develop  the  physical,  intellectual,  and  social  ca- 
pacities of  a  child,  and  neglect  the  spiritual  capaci- 
ties equally  inborn,  and  of  far  greater  value?  Re- 
ligious education  aims  to  enthrone  these  developed 
spiritual  qualities  over  the  unfolding  physical,  men- 
tal, and  social  powers.  If  homes  are  to  remain 
Christian,  if  the  Church  is  to  perpetuate  itself,  if 
the  State  is  to  feel  the  atmosphere  of  Jesus  Christ, 
Christian  education  must  primarily  be  in  the  home 
itself.     Supplemental  agencies  also  must  be  sup- 

^"  2  Tim.  1  :  5.  ««  Eph.  6  :  4. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  39 


ported  for  supplying  the  inability,  deficiency,  and 
lack  of  consecration  in  the  home.  The  highest  edu- 
cational influences  are  those  that  come  from  life. 
Oral  teaching  by  parents  may  be  offset  by  lives  in- 
consistent therewith.  The  opinion  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing those  who  "  talk  and  do  not ''  ^"  is  not  compli- 
mentary. Grace  at  meals  should  make  every  repast 
a  eucharist.  Family  prayers  cannot  be  dispensed 
with  without  domestic  injury.  Christian  living  by 
all  Christian  members  of  a  family  is  fundamental. 
Conversation  at  meals  about  religion  in  its  experi- 
mental, intellectual,  and  practical  aspects  should  be 
as  natural  in  a  Christian  home  as  chatter  about 
amusements,  gossip  about  society  affairs,  or  discus- 
sion concerning  the  daily  demands  of  mammon  wor- 
ship. Why  should  not  the  Bible  be  as  intelligently 
and  as  interestingly  considered  at  the  dinner-table 
as  the  scandals  and  murders  recorded  in  the  news- 
paper, or  the  novel  and  magazine,  or  the  drama? 
What  golden  opportunities  are  lost  by  the  exclusion 
of  the  world's  greatest  life,  literature,  and  enter- 
prises as  topics  of  conversation  at  mealtimes! 
What  priceless  chances  for  the  religious  education 
of  both  parents  and  children  are  thus  within  our 
reach ! 

3.  The  Christian  Faith  concerning  the  family  has 
a  message  to  theology.  We  have  theologies  based  on 
legalism.  Philosophies  and  metaphysics  also  have 
shaped  our  thinking.  We  have  tried  to  define  God 
and  man,  and  their  relations,  in  terms  that  satisfy 
our  speculations.  Why  should  not  Christian  the- 
ology return  to  the  thought  of  Jesus?  Principal 
Fairbairn  has  said :  "  If  we  attempt  to  construct  a 


»-  Matt.  23  :  3. 


40     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

theology  which  shall  be  faithful  to  the  consciousness 
of  Christ,  the  Fatherhood  must  be  the  determinative 
principle  of  thought.  It  is  the  architectonic  idea ;  out 
of  it  the  whole  system  must  grow;  with  it  all  ele- 
ments and  deductions  must  be  in  harmony;  all  else 
is  body ;  it  alone  is  the  informing  soul."  ^^^  It  is  un- 
necessary to  attempt  to  describe  theologies  that  have 
prevailed.  Beneath  any  theology  must  be  the  vi- 
tality of  the  Christian  Faith.  It  must  be  livable. 
A  theology  that  can  be  understood  by  all  is  a  great 
help  to  life,  and  such  a  theology  is  the  one  that 
springs  from  our  Lord's  use  of  the  family  relations. 

(a)  This  is  needed  in  Christian  lands  where  the 
family  is  at  its  best.  There  is  godlessness  enough 
in  every  such  land.  Any  country  is  today  called 
Christian  only  by  courtesy,  or  to  distinguish  it  from 
lands  where  Christianity  has  not  become  the  prevail- 
ing religion.  The  pulpits  of  our  own  land  should 
preach  a  theology  based  upon  our  Lord's  teaching. 
Myriads  of  earnest  hearts  crave  an  intelligible  inter- 
pretation of  their  religious  experiences.  Let  us 
frankly  confess  that  they  have  not  had  it  in  meta- 
physical theology,  or  in  Roman  legalism,  or  in 
Jewish  ritualism.  They  can  get  it  if  we  will  follow 
the  teachings  of  our  Lord  who  parabled  the  family. 

(b)  Such  a  theology  is  still  more  needed  in  the 
message  of  the  gospel  to  heathen  lands.  Among 
primitive  peoples  ignorant  of  our  philosophy  and 
metaphysics,  of  our  Bible,  of  Roman  jurisprudence, 
and  of  Jewish  ritualism,  theologies  based  on  these 
will  be  thoroughly  meaningless.  There  is  no  land 
where  the  family  does  not  exist.  Just  so  far  as  the 
missionary  can  use  the  basal  elements  of  family  life 

158  "  Tiie  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  Ttieology,"  p.  452. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  41 

as  a  starting-point  he  should  do  so.  God  has  laid  in 
the  human  heart,  in  family  love,  elements  to  which 
an  appeal  can  always  be  made  with  power.  The 
story  of  the  Prodigal  Son  and  of  his  Waiting  Father 
will  reach  the  densest  savage  consciousness.  There 
is  no  one  in  any  benighted  land  so  irrevocably  sub- 
merged in  error,  ignorance,  or  superstition  that  our 
Lord's  use  of  the  family  will  not  reveal  to  such  an 
one  tangential  points  between  himself  and  God. 

4.  Not  even  family  life  must  be  ^permitted  to  inter- 
fere with  the  highest  relations  to  God.  This  most 
sacred  earthly  institution  cannot  stand  between 
souls  and  the  heavenly  Father.  This  was  the  mean- 
ing of  some  events  in  the  life  of  our  Lord.  At  the 
marriage  at  Cana,  Jesus,  who  honored  his  mother 
as  no  son  ever  honored  a  mother,  said,  "  Woman, 
what  have  I  to  do  with  thee?  "  ^'^  When  our  Lord's 
mother  and  his  brothers  thought  that  he  was  insane 
and  wished  to  obtain  possession  of  him,  his  reply 
concerning  real  kinship  has  forevermore  emanci- 
pated the  duty  of  the  soul  to  God  from  family  con- 
^j.q1  160  When  some  woman  felicitated  the  womb 
that  bore  him  and  the  breasts  that  nourished  him, 
he  declared,  "  Yea,  rather  blessed  are  they  who  hear 
the  word  of  God  and  keep  it."  ^''^  This  intimate  rela- 
tion between  each  soul  and  God  must  be  preached 
fearlessly  as  part  of  the  Christian  faith  concerning 
the  family.  No  merely  hereditary  religion  can  stand 
before  this  truth.  Any  attempt  on  the  part  of  a 
parent  to  coerce  or  force  the  faith  of  his  child,  or 
the  effort  to  prevent  the  child  from  the  free  and  vol- 
untary exercise  of  its  own  faith  in  God,  is  contrary 

"9  John  2:4. 

i«o  Mark  3  :  21,  :U-:^r>  ;  Matt.   12  :  4G-48. 
i«i  Lnko  11  :  27,  28. 
D 


42     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

to  the  Christian  faith  concerning  the  family.  It  is 
sad  but  true  that  parents,  sometimes  themselves  not 
Christians,  frequently  prevent  their  children  from 
public  confession  of  faith  in  Christ.  Many  times 
such  desires  by  boys  and  girls  in  their  wonderful 
adolescent  period  are  thwarted,  with  untold  damage 
to  the  hearts  that  are  disappointed.  The  attempt  of 
parents  to  control  children  in  matters  that  ought  to 
be  decided  beween  the  child  and  God  is  a  usurpation 
of  divine  rights.^^^  There  are  times  today  when  it 
must  be  said,  "  Whosoever  loveth  father  or  mother 
or  wife  or  children  more  than  me,  is  not  worthy  of 
me."  ^^^  We  are  closer  to  God  than  to  our  parents. 
This  is  the  priceless  intimacy  that  makes  redemption 
possible,  and  puts  within  our  grasp  freedom  from 
the  burden  of  heredity,  independence  of  environ- 
ment, and  deliverance  from  our  own  sinful  past.  It 
was  an  Old  Testament  prophet  who  represented 
Jehovah  as  saying,  "  As  I  live,  saith  the  Lord  Jeho- 
vah, behold  all  souls  are  mine."  ^^*  Our  relation  to 
the  heavenly  Father  is  more  intimate  than  to  our 
nearest  earthly  kin,  and  must  not  be  interfered  with. 
5.  The  Christian  Faith  concerning  the  family  has 
a  message  for  the  social  order.  In  these  days  of  fer- 
ment the  thought  of  readjustment  is  in  the  air.  In 
the  regions  of  industry,  commerce,  and  internation- 
alism, and  in  all  realms  of  society,  we  find  chaos,  per- 
plexity, and  blind  groping.  We  wander  hopelessly 
through  legislation,  and  through  the  mazes  of  educa- 
tion. If  it  be  true  that  all  the  kingdoms  of  this  world 
are  to  become  the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  his 
Christ,^«-'  that  the  realms  of  home,  education,  science, 

"2  Rom.  14  :  12.  '"*  E^^ek.  18  :  3,  4. 

M3  Matt.  10  :  37  ;  Luke  14  :  26.  ^°^  Rev.  11 :  15. 


The  Christian  Failh  and  the  Family  43 

politics,  industry,  internationalism,  and  all  others 
are  to  be  permeated  by  the  spirit  of  God  revealed  in 
Jesus  Christ,  the  work  of  the  church,  the  Christian 
ministry,  and  the  Christian  home  is  gigantic,  and 
far  remote  from  realization.  The  kingdom  of  God 
means  the  family  of  God.  Filial  relations  to  God 
and  fraternal  relations  among  men  are  Christ's 
ideal  for  society.  The  extension  of  the  family  idea 
of  religion  through  all  the  earth  is  the  supreme  task 
of  Christian  agencies.  We  must  say  to  all  men: 
"  You  are  brothers;  why  should  you  strive?  "  We 
must  say  to  employers  in  the  realms  of  industry, 
"  Your  men  are  not  slaves  but  brothers."  ^«^  We  must 
say  to  trades-unions  and  federations,  "  However 
fraternal  you  are  among  yourselves,  your  spirit  of 
fraternity  must  be  extended  to  your  employers."  '*'' 
We  must  declare  to  the  dark  underworld  of  vice  that 
no  man  has  the  right  to  claim  the  low  pleasure  of 
sensuality  at  the  expense  of  his  sister's  body.  We 
must  say  to  our  stormy,  selfish,  partisan  politics  that 
however  variant  may  be  economic  ideas,  all  strife 
and  rivalry  should  be  fraternal  in  its  spirit,  and 
with  the  one  great  idea  of  burying  personal  and 
party  ambition,  and  of  exalting  the  welfare  of  the 
nation.  We  must  say  to  the  world  that  all  races  are 
of  one  blood,  made  to  feel  after  God  if  haply  they 
might  find  him,^''^'  and  that  no  matter  what  may  be 
the  color  of  skin,  or  geographical  location,  or  past 
traditions,  all  are  brothers.  It  is  inconsistent  for 
Christians  to  send  missionaries  to  Japan  and  China 
and  Africa  and  Continental  Europe  to  preach  the 
family  idea  of  Christianity,  and  then  to  vote  for 

i««  Philem.  16.  i^s  Acts  17:26,  27. 

J"  Eph.  6  :  5-7. 


44     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

America's  isolation  from  other  nations,  as  if  the 
ideal  of  Jesus  were  empty  and  vain.  We  must  rid 
ourselves  of  the  hypocrisy  of  professing  to  believe 
in  the  brotherhood  of  all  men  and  at  the  same  time 
legislate  against  the  spirit  and  realization  of  frater- 
nity. The  stereopticon  slide  of  filial  relation  to  God 
and  fraternal  relations  between  men  is  to  be  pro- 
jected upon  the  screen  of  the  world. 

6.  Sin  is  unfilial  and  unfraternal.  There  can  be 
no  adequate  conception  of  sin  that  ignores  these 
aspects.  However  legalism  may  define  sin  as  law- 
lessness, its  essentially  and  thoroughly  destructive 
nature  is  best  felt  by  us  when  we  realize  its  horrible 
nature  as  an  unfilial  break  with  our  heavenly 
Father,  and  a  fracture  of  brotherly  relations.  Both 
these  frightful  ideas  of  sin  appear  in  the  story  of 
The  Prodigal  Son.  The  wilful  wayward  boy  tears 
himself  from  the  father's  fellowship.  The  selfish 
elder  brother  had  lost  all  compassion  for  his  blood 
kin.  These  concepts  derived  from  the  family  rela- 
tions help  us,  as  perhaps  no  other,  to  realize  the 
"  exceeding  sinfulness  of  sin."  To  trample  upon  a 
parent's  heart,  upon  paternal  love  that  never 
wearies ;  to  be  unbrotherly  in  attitudes  and  deeds,  is 
to  present  glaring  unnaturalness.  Sin  is  abnormal 
because  it  is  unfilial.  It  is  antisocial  because  it  is 
unfraternal.  It  wounds  and  grieves  the  heart  of 
infinite  Love,  and  fractures  all  ideal  relations  of 
brotherhood.  Out  of  history  with  its  wars,  vices, 
cruelties,  selfishness,  troops  the  vast  procession  of 
illustrations  of  the  unfilial  and  unfraternal  character 
of  sin. 

7.  The  Christian  Faith  concerning  the  family 
bears  upon  our  conception  of  salvation.    This,  ac- 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Family  45 


cording  to  Jesus,  was  not  getting  into  heaven,  nor 
was  it  escaping  from  hell.  Untold  harm  has  been 
done  to  the  world's  welfare  by  this  other-worldly 
notion  of  salvation  that  has  dominated  the  church 
too  extensively.  It  has  promoted  false  and  sacra- 
mental means  of  salvation.  It  has  established  an 
ecclesiastical  caste  as  the  custodians  of  post-mortem 
happiness.  It  has  emphasized  crass  individualism, 
and  almost  smothered  the  social  aspects  of  the 
gospel.  Salvation  is  right  relation  to  God  and  our 
fellow  men,  in  this  world.  Here  and  now  we  may 
have  eternal  life,  which  is  not  mere  everlastingness 
of  existence,  but  the  life  of  the  Eternal  One  in  us.^«^ 
It  is  mediated  to  us  only  by  Jesus  Christ,  and  con- 
sists in  each  person's  filial  life  with  God,^^"^  and  his 
fraternal  life  with  all  men.^'^  Only  such  an  idea  of 
salvation  satisfies  the  teachings  of  our  Lord.  He 
bids  us  share  his  own  filial  life  of  faith  in  the  Father, 
obedience  to  his  holy  will,  communion  with  him  in 
spirit  and  life,  and  also  the  life  of  righteousness  and 
sacrificial  love  in  dealings  with  and  relations  to  men. 
Jesus  asks  all  men  to  share  in  his  own  personal  re- 
ligion. Only  through  the  gate  of  repentance  can  we 
begin.  Surely  none  can  mistake  his  ideal,  nor  shift 
it  upon  either  a  legal  or  ritualistic  basis.  It  was  the 
family  idea  that  he  preached,  because  he  lived  it. 
There  is  no  place  but  the  Father's  home  ''~  for  his 
children  to  go  when  death  ends  our  filial  life  here. 
And  no  child  of  such  a  Father  could  ever  be  sepa- 
rated from  him  in  any  sort  of  hell  of  which  we  can 
conceive.^ '-^    In  this  intelligible  and  Christly  concep- 

i«9  John  17:3.  »"  John  14:2. 

i'«  Matt.  T)  :  4.').  »"  Rom.  8  :  35-39. 

>"  Matt.  7  :  3,  4. 


46     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

tion  of  salvation  each  of  us  may  rest.  God  grant  that 
our  home  lives  may  make  the  family  relations  indeed 
a  parable  to  us,  and  to  our  dear  ones,  and  to  the 
world  of  the  parental,  filial,  and  fraternal  content  of 
our  divine  Lord's  holy  gospel. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The  Bible. 

Hastings'  Dictionary  of  the  Bible;  articles:  "Family," 
"  God,"  "  Marriage." 

Rauschenbusch,  "  Christianizing  the  Social  Order,"  Chap- 
ter II,  VI. 

James  Stalker,  "  Imago  Christi,"  Chapter  II. 

James  Stalker,  "  The  Ethics  of  Jesus,"  Chapter  XV. 

H.  H.  Wendt,  "The  Teaching  of  Jesus,"  Third  Section, 
Chapter  II. 

A.  B.  Bruce,  "  The  Kingdom  of  God,"  Chapter  IV. 

A.  M.  Fairbairn,  "The  Place  of  Christ  in  Modern  The- 
ology," Div.  Ill,  Chapters  I,  II. 

A.  M.  Fairbairn,  "  Religion  in  History  and  in  Modern 
Life,"  Lecture  III. 

W.  N.  Clarke,  "  The  Christian  Doctrine  of  God,"  Chap- 
ter 11. 

C.  F.  Kent,  "  The  Student's  Old  Testament,  Israel's  Laws 
and  Legal  Precedents,"  pp.  51-73;  110-118,  291. 

H.  C.  Vedder,  "  Socialism  and  the  Ethics  of  Jesus,"  Chap- 
ter X. 

Alvah  Hovey,  "  Christian  Teaching  and  Life,"  Chapters 
I,  VL 

C.  L.  Brace,  "  Gesta  Christi,"  Chapters  II,  III,  IV,  VI, 
VII,  XI,  XXII,  XXIII,  XXIV,  XXV,  XXVI. 

Gerhard  Uhlhorn,  "  Conflict  of  Christianity  with  Heathen- 
ism," Chapter  II. 


II 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
LIFE  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 

V 

By  Shailer  Mathews,  D.  D.,  LL.  D. 

Dean  of  the  Divinity  School  of  the  University  of  Chicago 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
LIFE  OF  THE  COMMUNITY 


THE  nineteenth  century  gave  us  Society;  the 
twentieth  has  discovered  the  Community.  The 
difference  between  the  two  achievements  is  that 
between  abstractions  and  folks.  A  few  years  ago 
men  were  leaving  the  ministry  to  save  society ;  today 
they  are  concerned  with  the  less  ambitious  task  of 
serving  the  religious  and  moral  needs  of  the  com- 
munity in  which  they  live.  The  change  of  attitude 
reflects  a  change  in  sociology.  The  searchers  for  a 
definition  of  society  long  ago  abandoned  analogies 
born  of  biology  and  turned  to  psychology.  Today 
they  are  coming  to  think  of  society  as  a  combination 
of  groups  organized  not  only  to  meet  certain  needs 
but  also  to  give  expression  to  a  common  purpose. 
As  a  galaxy  is  a  combination  of  solar  systems,  so 
society  is  a  group  unifying  groups.  And  among 
these  is  the  Community. 

It  is  hard  for  any  one  irrepressibly  philosophical 
to  realize  that  the  community  is  really  worth  his 
attention.  It  is  not  universal  enough.  Just  as  an 
actuary  never  undertakes  to  say  that  any  given  man 
is  an  illustration  of  his  actuarial  tables,  so  your  thor- 
oughgoing idealist,  whether  he  be  a  poet,  clergyman, 
or  sociologist,  is  superior  to  folks.  They  offer  too 
many  exceptions  to  his  formula.  Saving  society  per- 
mits one  to  announce  a  program ;  one  can  be  a  rad- 
ical.   Saving  a  community  means  that  one  must  deal 


52     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

with  Mr.  A.  and  Mrs.  A.,  and  all  the  little  a's — not 
to  mention  the  rest  of  the  alphabet. 


A  community  is  not  an  abstraction.  It  is  the 
alphabet  of  individuals  united  in  more  or  less  elabo- 
rate social  words.  It  has  an  identity  of  its  own.  It 
influences  its  members,  it  inhibits  or  favors  pro- 
gress, it  is  miserly  or  spendthrift.  To  realize  this 
mysterious  social  personality  one  needs  only  to  pass 
from  one  town  to  another.  Worcester  builds  turtle- 
roofed  apartment  houses  and  Los  Angeles  bunga- 
lows. I  have  in  mind  two  small  country  towns  of 
approximately  the  same  age  and  size.  The  one  has 
two  banks,  a  brick  town  hall,  a  street  lined  with 
brick  stores,  a  hotel,  a  high-school  building  with 
laboratories,  gymnasium,  domestic  science  kitchen, 
and  an  assembly  hall.  Its  citizens  are  not  wealthy 
but  are  full  of  community  spirit.  They  have  feder- 
ated two  churches,  support  an  energetic  woman's 
club,  and  throughout  last  summer  had  a  community 
night  with  band  music,  games,  and  dancing  in  the 
main  street  (they  have  no  park).  The  other  town 
has  no  bank,  several  stores,  good  schools  of  the  type 
of  twenty  years  ago,  no  hotel,  churches  dying  of 
rivalries  of  forgotten  origin,  a  band,  but,  except  a 
small  library,  no  community  life  except  commercial 
dances.  You  will  see  that  both  communities  have 
much  in  common,  but  they  are  thoroughly  unlike.  It 
is  iiard  to  describe  their  difference,  but  it  is  easily 
felt.  The  "  spirit,"  we  say,  of  each  is  different.  And 
in  saying  that  we  disclose  a  point  of  contact  between 
Christian  Faith  and  the  community  life. 

Without  yielding  to  the  ever-present  temptation 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     53 

to  personify  communities,  it  is  permissible  to  say 
that  they  have  different  characters.  Or  to  use  a 
more  technical  term,  each  has  its  own  social  mind — 
that  complex  of  ideas,  prejudices,  ambitions,  likes 
and  dislikes,  which  mark  a  community  and  tend  to 
reproduce  themselves  in  its  members. 

Social  minds  express  themselves  in  many  ways, 
but  in  none  more  potently  than  in  customs.  Indeed 
customs  might  almost  be  described  as  the  charac- 
teristic contents  of  a  social  mind.  If  the  Christian 
Faith  is  to  touch  the  community  in  other  ways  than 
the  indispensable  transformation  of  individuals,  it 
must  concern  itself  with  customs.  For  customs  arc 
morals  in  the  making. 

It  is  difficult  for  each  generation  to  approve  the 
customs  and  the  resulting  morals  of  its  successor. 
If  in  some  communities  the  successors  of  one  genera- 
tion are  immigrants  with  novel  social  habits,  appre- 
ciation is  also  threatened  with  contempt.  But  in  all 
communities  youths  develop  or  reject  social  inheri- 
tance. And  the  older  folks  cannot  understand  them 
or  their  ways.  All  of  us  forget  that  at  some  time 
in  our  youth  we  thought  to  change  the  world  in 
which  we  lived.  Some  of  us  may  even  venture  to 
believe  that  we  have  changed  it  somewhat.  But 
these  individual  revolts  and  reformations  are  as 
nothing  compared  with  the  effects  produced  by  wide- 
spread economic  and  political  change,  universally 
accepted  forms  of  amusement,  world-wide  styles  in 
dress,  literature,  and  music.  It  is  hard  for  those  of 
us  who  cling  to  mid-Victorian  manners  and  ideas, 
to  understand,  much  less  approve,  these  new  mores. 
But  understand  them  we  must  if  we  are  to  be  wel- 
comed advisors.     The  generation  that  fought  the 


54     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 


war  has  no  great  admiration  for  the  generation  that 
brought  the  war  about.  It  demands  and  invents 
new  Hterature  (if  indeed  it  be  hterature) ,  new  music 
(if  indeed  it  be  music),  new  clothes  (if  indeed  they 
be  clothes) .  It  sees  no  more  need  of  chaperones  at 
home  than  in  the  devastated  regions  of  France.  Its 
motto  is  Honi  soit  qui  mal  y  pense,  and  it  does  not 
stop  to  think.  It  is  restless  unto  toddling,  loqua- 
cious unto  "  lines,''  bound  to  be  rich  between  week- 
end parties,  and  bound  to  spend  more  on  the  parties 
than  it  earns  during  the  week. 

At  all  events  that  is  the  picture  we  are  apt  to 
paint  of  those  amazing  young  people  who  wait,  not 
too  patiently,  to  take  over  our  parts  upon  the  stage 
of  life.  But  they  themselves  have  no  such  opinion 
of  themselves.  They  frankly  tell  us  we  misunder- 
stand them.  And  perhaps  we  do.  Our  parents 
seemed  occasionally  to  misunderstand  us !  But  mis- 
understood or  not,  our  children  are  already  making 
new  customs  for  the  new  age  we  have  promised 
them.  Every  community  in  the  nation  is  engaged 
in  the  adventure.  Can  our  Christian  Faith  survive 
the  tension  ? 

We  have  only  to  look  about  us  to  see  that  there  is 
real  danger  that,  unless  new  power  comes  to  them, 
churches  will  not  survive.  Religious  statistics  are 
slow  to  respond  to  actual  social  forces,  for  pastors 
and  church  clerks  dislike  "  losses  "  as  badly  as  sem- 
inary trustees  dislike  deficits.  But  the  ebb  of  church 
life  begins  to  show.  Each  of  us  has  his  explanation, 
most  of  us  have  our  panaceas.  We  advise  every- 
thing from  newspaper  advertising  to  theories  of 
inspiration.  But  the  desiccating  process  continues 
in  Protestantism  at  large.    We  may  well  ask  whether 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     55 


we  have  yet  been  given  the  correct  diagnosis  of  the 
complaint. 

In  my  opinion  there  is  one  general  explanation 
of  the  present  situation.  The  church  of  the  past  has 
bequeathed  us  a  morality  insufficient  for  the  evolv- 
ing social  order.  It  is  good  as  far  as  it  applies ;  but 
as  actually  expounded  by  its  representatives  it 
reaches  hardly  further  than  respectability.  The 
church  of  today  has  to  Christianize  the  new  social 
mind  that  already  is  precipitating  its  morality  in  the 
customs  of  each  community.  Failure  waits  upon 
the  attempt  to  limit  the  morality  of  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments and  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  exclu- 
sively to  individuals.  Atomistic  individual  activity 
no  longer  exists,  if  indeed  it  ever  existed.  As  never 
before  we  act  as  members  of  economic  classes  and 
local  communities.  Christianity  has  little  meaning 
for  the  world  unless  it  can  evangelize,  that  is,  altru- 
ize,  social  forces.  We  can  never  make  our  com- 
munity life  better  simply  by  denouncing  dances  we 
dislike  and  our  children  approve,  social  customs  un- 
like those  of  our  youth  which  our  children  invent, 
moral  standards  that  were  bizarre  a  generation  ago 
but  are  conventional  today.  We  have  bigger  tasks 
on  our  hands.  We  must  check  in  the  making  customs 
which  tend  toward  moral  disintegration  through 
making  pleasure  the  sole  antidote  for  ennui  and 
fatigue. 

We  must  remove  the  causes  which  explain  social 
excess.  We  must  frankly  see  that  economic  condi- 
tions are  as  much  a  matter  of  religion's  concern  as 
they  were  when  Moses  forbade  stealing  and  covet- 
ousness.  We  must  make  personal  welfare  rather 
than  profits  the  test  of  industry.     We  must  show 


56     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

women  that  to  gain  full  personal  rights  makes 
all  the  more  weighty  their  duty  to  consecrate  their 
womanhood  to  the  welfare  of  the  race.  We  must 
fear  neither  change  nor  conservatism,  sacrifice  nor 
achievement.  We  have  the  custom-making  of  in- 
dividuals, communities,  nations  to  inspire  with  the 
spirit  of  Jesus  Christ.  And  one  point  of  contact  is 
the  actual  community  in  which  we  live. 

II 

A  most  discouraged  person  is  an  idealist  who  has 
discovered  that  people  put  practical  interests  above 
ideals.  It  is  a  rare  man  who,  under  such  circum- 
stances, does  not  grow  cynical  or  despondent.  So 
long  as  he  has  been  able  to  play  the  part  of  a  gen- 
eralizing oracle,  his  pictures  of  a  better  world  prob- 
ably gain  a  sort  of  non-committal  assent.  The 
idealist  is  therefore  tempted  to  forget  that  humanity 
cannot  be  reduced  to  algebra — to  x  +  y  equals  z ; 
for  you  have  to  know  what  *'  x  "  and  "  y  "  really 
are.  What  sort  of  reality  would  z  represent  if  x 
represented  Capitalism  and  y  represented  Bolshe- 
vism? You  can  program  ideals;  you  have  to  per- 
suade folks.  And  such  persuasion  is  an  act  requir- 
ing patience  and  often  threatening  the  cross. 

It  would  be  foolish  to  deny  the  need  of  ideals,  but 
ideals  should  not  obscure  real  people.  We  must  needs 
talk  about  the  kingdom  of  God,  although,  like  Paul, 
we  may  very  well  be  aware  that  its  prospective 
members  can  more  safely  be  addressed  as  those 
"  called  to  be  saints  "  than  as  "  saints.''  We  believe 
in  democracy,  even  though  we  have  difficulty  in  find- 
ing approved  democrats.  Refuse  the  practical  world 
the  lure  of  unobtainable  abstractions,  and  much  of 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     57 

the  driving  power  of  altruism  will  disappear.  Tasks 
compel  us,  but  ideals  justify  tasks.  Even  an  agnos- 
tic will  capitalize  the  word  "  Absolute."  But,  grant- 
ing all  this,  whoever  devotes  his  life  solely  to  ab- 
stractions finds  himself  hard  pressed  when  he  meets 
men  and  women  who  question  his  right  to  utter 
oracles.  The  community  refuses  to  become  the  king- 
dom of  God.  Thereupon  your  idealist  grows  dis- 
couraged. He  finds  the  seeds  of  pessimism  in  the 
morning  newspaper.  His  neighbors  do  not  want  to 
go  to  church,  and  do  want  to  go  to  the  movies.  His 
city  seems  fecund  of  hold-up  men,  declines  to  adopt 
reforms  which  seem  to  him  axiomatic,  its  young 
people  seem  careless  of  safe  conventions,  its  busi- 
ness men  seem  neglectful  of  the  fine  arts,  its  women 
dress  immodestly,  its  voters  prefer  normalcy  to  the 
League  of  Nations,  and  its  ministers  no  longer 
preach  the  pure  gospel !  Your  disillusioned  idealist 
sympathizes  with  Elijah  under  the  juniper  tree. 

Yet  that  is  the  experience  through  which  we  are 
threatened  passage. 

Face  to  face  with  a  real  community,  men  of  Chris- 
tian Faith  gravitate  in  one  of  two  directions.  There 
are  those  who  are  convinced  that  the  community  and 
society  itself  are  helpless  and  fit  only  to  be  destroyed, 
and  that  presently  Christ  will  appear  for  the  pur- 
pose of  destruction.  In  the  meantime,  the  only 
course  open  to  men  of  faith  is  to  announce  the  com- 
ing doom,  ameliorate  human  suffering,  and  rescue 
from  its  approaching  ruin  such  persons  as  may  be 
elected  by  God  for  that  deliverance. 

With  Christians  of  such  predilections  it  is  useless 
to  argue.  To  hope  that  civilization  is  to  be  destroyed 
and  the  earth  cleansed  with  fire  in  order  that  upon 
E 


58     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

it  may  be  established  the  community  of  the  saints,  is 
to  abandon  reason.  To  limit  the  love  of  God  to  mere 
rescue  is  to  Hmit  his  power  to  save.  From  such  a 
point  of  view  Christian  Faith  has  about  the  same 
relation  to  the  community  as  had  monasticism;  the 
church  stands  over  against  the  community  as  a 
place  of  refuge  and  a  dispenser  of  charity  and  good 
works.  It  has  no  social  gospel  and,  to  quote  a  pro- 
nouncement made  by  English  premillenarians  dur- 
ing the  War,  would  make  "  all  human  schemes  of 
reconstruction  subsidiary  to  the  second  coming  of 
our  Lord  because  all  nations  will  be  subject  to  his 
rule." 

Other  Christians  see  in  the  community  a  sphere 
of  operation  of  the  Christian  Faith — the  same  Chris- 
tian Faith  that  John  had — ^namely,  that  God  sent  his 
Son  not  to  condemn  but  to  save  the  world.  With 
this  faith  such  Christians  undertake  to  discuss  the 
means  and  methods  by  which  such  salvation  is  to  be 
accomplished. 

It  may  be  argued  that  this  faith  in  the  salvability 
of  a  real  community  is  not  necessarily  Christian — 
that  it  is  possessed  by  sociology  as  well  as  by  the 
gospel.  In  a  sense  this  is  true,  and  fortunately.  A 
gospel  inconsistent  with  the  real  world  could  not  be 
treated  seriously.  If  the  God  of  Jesus  were  other 
than  the  God  of  the  universe  and  of  history,  we 
might  well  despair.  It  is  only  what  an  intelligent 
Christian  would  expect  when  he  finds  the  salvability 
of  a  community  affirmed  by  the  investigator. 

Ill 

The  most  obvious  and  at  present,  perhaps,  most 
emphasized  aspect  of  the  application  of  the  Chris- 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     59 

tian  Faith  to  the  life  of  the  community,  is  the  social 
work  of  the  church  as  an  institution.  Not  that  such 
a  situation  is  ultramodern.  In  fact,  little  is  ultra- 
modern to  a  historian.  When  one  recalls  the  care 
of  the  early  church  for  prisoners,  the  poor,  the  sick, 
widows,  strangers,  and  children;  the  work  of  the 
medieval  friars  and  sisters;  the  ever-discoverable 
self-devoting  ministry  of  charity-workers,  mission- 
aries, and  pastors;  the  foundation  of  universities, 
schools,  and  colleges ;  the  prodigality  with  which  the 
church  of  the  nineteenth  century  established  hos- 
pitals, orphanages,  young  people's  societies,  and 
means  of  scientific  amelioration  of  poverty;  the 
social  zeal  of  the  church  of  the  twentieth  century 
seems  anything  but  a  sociological  Melchizedek.  Nev- 
ertheless, we  realize  the  new  impetus  to  be  zealous 
in  community  service  that  is  firing  forward-looking 
Christians.  Faith,  as  never  before,  is  being  ener- 
gized by  love. 

And  certainly  we  must  believe  that  the  church  has 
a  community  mission  as  well  as  message.  The  better 
we  understand  religion  the  more  clearly  comes  the 
duty  of  the  church  as  social  engineer.  The  institu- 
tional church  may  not  be  needed  by  all  types  of  com- 
munities, but  the  fundamental  principle  upon  which 
it  is  built  is  universally  true:  every  phase  of  life 
must  either  be  opposed  or  developed  by  the  church. 
Of  course  it  is  impossible  for  such  a  sweeping  gen- 
eralization to  be  administered;  but,  so  long  as  re- 
ligion is  a  phase  of  life,  so  long  it  cannot  be  disso- 
ciated from  the  forces  which  go  to  determine  what 
life  shall  be.  So  long  as  the  individual  is  partly  the 
product  of  community  life,  so  long  the  church  must 
be  interested  in  the  factors  of  the  community  life. 


60     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

It  requires,  for  example,  no  particular  skill  as  a 
sociologist  to  discover  that  every  community  in 
America  is  interested  in  moving  pictures.  But  they 
are  only  one  of  the  forces  which  are  stirring  the 
mind  through  the  appeal  to  the  eye.  It  is  always 
easy  for  the  reformer  to  overestimate  the  danger 
of  the  evil  which  he  is  endeavoring  to  reform ;  but, 
after  all  due  allowance  has  been  made  for  this  like- 
lihood, the  fact  remains  that  it  makes  very  decided 
difference  whether  the  community  is  constantly 
being  subjected  to  suggestions  which  are  antisocial 
or  even  vicious.  The  church  cannot  be  indifferent  to 
such  an  element  in  the  shaping  of  the  point  of  view 
of  the  community. 

Similarly,  the  church  finds  a  legitimate  field  of 
reform  in  all  forms  of  commercialized  play  from  the 
theater  to  the  prize-fight.  It  has  had  no  mean  part 
in  prohibiting  the  sale  of  intoxicants  and  the  per- 
sonalizing of  women  in  industry  and  politics.  The 
utterances  of  religious  conventions  have  been  of  late 
almost  uniformly  in  favor  of  giving  specific  rights 
to  working  men.  Our  missionaries  have  founded 
schools,  built  hospitals,  and  are  now  spreading  the 
gospel  through  agricultural  experiment  and  teach- 
ing. Swimming-pools  and  gymnasiums,  hikes  and 
cook-stoves  are  already  means  of  grace.  The  next 
generation  will  expand  this  social  service  to  the 
very  limits  of  community  life. 

Too  often,  let  us  grant,  the  Christian  feels  that  his 
duty  is  done  when  he  has  exposed  an  evil  and  de- 
nounced it.  Such  action  is  necessary,  for  there  are 
practises  and  institutions  in  the  community  life  that 
cannot  be  reformed — they  must  be  destroyed.  We 
v/ant  no    compromise    with    gambling-houses    and 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     61 

brothels.  Constructive  tasks,  however,  though  more 
difficult,  are  quite  as  important.  Speaking  gener- 
ally, churches  must  introduce  certain  elements  of 
the  community  life  which  later  will  be  taken  over  by 
the  community  itself.  I  have  in  mind  particularly 
playgrounds  and  the  general  recreational  life  of  the 
community,  especially  if  it  be  a  small  town.  Play, 
we  are  now  coming  to  see,  is  as  normal  as  work. 
Such  initiative  on  the  part  of  the  church,  it  goes 
without  saying,  must  be  intelligently  exercised. 
Leadership  in  recreation  is  in  many  particulars 
highly  specialized.  The  church  that  will  be  really 
significant  in  this  field  will  need  a  man  who  possesses 
not  only  common  sense  and  the  human  spirit  of  play 
but  also  some  instruction  in  the  conduct  of  com- 
munity play. 

And  the  same  can  be  said  of  the  church's  relation 
to  other  non-economic  aspects  of  the  community's 
life.  Libraries  and  study-classes,  lectures  and  con- 
certs, are  not  outside  its  initiative  and  nurture.  In 
many  communities  the  churches  are  the  only  con- 
tinuing centers  of  social  life.  Our  own  distant 
ancestors  were  unconsciously  community  workers 
when  they  so  arranged  their  church  services  that 
the  scattered  farmers  might  get  a  touch  of  social 
solidarity  in  the  luncheons  eaten  in  the  adjacent 
graveyards. 

Of  course,  the  minister  does  not  need  to  monopo- 
lize leadership  in  such  community  activity,  although 
it  is  likely  he  often  will  have  the  larger  responsi- 
bility. No  small  part  of  the  church's  task  is  to 
arouse  a  sense  of  cooperation  in  the  community  itself 
in  establishing  proper  agencies  that  will  make  its 
members  enjoy  life  as  well  as  earn  a  living.     We 


62     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

ought  not  to  let  the  churchyard  be  populated  with 
persons  who  might  have  done  much  if  much  had 
been  required  of  them. 

Into  the  details  of  this  community  leadership  by 
the  church  I  do  not  mean  to  enter.  It  is  now  so  gen- 
erally recognized  that  little  argument  is  necessary 
to  convince  forward-looking  minds  that  the  church 
must  be  a  social  engineer.  One  thing,  however, 
needs  to  be  said:  a  community  church  is  a  church 
for  the  community,  not  a  community  considered  as 
a  church.  The  significance  of  this  distinction  will 
be  apparent  to  all  who  have  kept  in  touch  with  the 
agitation  now  abroad  to  induce  the  community  to 
have  the  same  relation  toward  the  church  as  it  has 
toward  the  schoolhouse,  except  that  the  minister's 
salary  will  not  be  added  to  the  taxes.  Such  a  policy 
is,  of  course,  not  new — it  is  as  old  as  the  colonial 
period.  But,  in  my  opinion,  under  only  one  condi- 
tion can  it  possibly  be  more  successful  now  than  it 
was  two  hundred  years  ago.  That  one  exception  is, 
however,  more  dangerous  than  the  general  truth, 
for  it  is  that  the  church  may  function  as  a  com- 
munity when  as  a  church  it  ceases  to  be  religious. 
And  a  church  that  has  lost  its  religion  is  salt  that 
has  lost  its  savor. 

It  is  conceivable  that  a  community  might  be  com- 
posed of  genuinely  church  people,  and  that  its  mem- 
bers might  transform  the  community  into  an  eccle- 
siastical organization.  But  practically  no  such 
expectation  is  warranted.  A  community  will  contain 
many  persons  who  are  not  interested  in  the  church 
as  a  religious  organization,  however  much  they 
might  desire  it  as  social  headquarters.  There  are 
undoubtedly    many    persons  who  would  prefer  to 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     63 

have  a  community  house  to  a  community  church, 
but,  in  the  very  nature  of  the  case,  there  can  be 
no  question  as  to  whether  the  church  is  to  exist  for 
certain  rehgious  or  moral  aims  to  which  its  recrea- 
tional and  social  activities  are  subordinate,  or  be 
simply  a  social  club  holding  meetings  on  Sunday  but 
without  any  serious  conception  of  a  religious  mis- 
sion. There  is  a  specious  interest  in  the  church 
which  demands  no  particular  religious  experience 
on  the  part  of  its  members,  and  emphasizes  as  lib- 
erality what  is,  in  effect,  an  easy-going  indifference. 
If  such  a  church  maintains  a  social  hall,  a  gymna- 
sium, and  a  swimming-pool,  and  other  social  agen- 
cies, it  may  very  likely  find  that  the  families  of  the 
community  will  send  its  children  to  church  on  Sun- 
day and  occasionally  come  themselves.  I  would  not 
say  that  a  community  with  such  a  church  is  not 
better  off  than  if  it  were  lacking.  A  nucleus  for 
social  life  which  emphasizes  the  better  aspects  of 
the  community  is  highly  desirable.  But  I  cannot 
feel  that  such  a  church  is  really  grappling  ulti- 
mately with  the  question  which  the  community  life 
propounds  to  the  Christian  Faith.  Important  as  is 
the  transformation  of  social  forces  by  the  church,  it 
is  vastly  more  important  that  these  social  forces  be 
carriers  of  spiritual  and  moral  idealism.  A  church 
fails  miserably  of  fulfilling  its  mission  when  it  per- 
mits community  service  to  become  an  anesthetic  for 
moral  and  religious  aspiration.  Sociology  can  never 
be  a  safe  substitute  for  the  gospel.  Community  ser- 
vice is  a  good  servant  but  a  poor  master  of  faith. 
The  most  needed  service  which  men  of  Christian 
faith  can  render  a  community  is  much  more  than 
physical. 


64     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 


IV 

The  elemental  forces  in  human  history  are  spir- 
itual. The  effort  to  reduce  human  life  to  a  mech- 
anism and  history  to  economic  and  geographic  de- 
terminism, is  certainly  far  enough  from  complete 
success.  I  cannot  believe  that  such  efforts  will  ever 
succeed.  We  have  fought  and  won  a  war  to  protect 
a  world  from  the  philosophy  of  the  will  to  power. 
But  far  more  dangerous  than  a  Nietzschean  philos- 
ophy in  a  community  is  its  loyalty  to  a  Nietzschean 
practise.  Despite  the  preaching  of  two  thousand 
years  the  world  is  not  yet  fully  persuaded  to  live 
according  to  its  professed  ideals.  Just  as  men  may 
be  rational  but  too  seldom  reasonable,  may  they  hold 
to  the  vocabulary  of  virtue  and  possess  the  efficiency 
of  vice.  When  this  hypocrisy  is  sufficiently  blatant, 
it  is  easy  to  condemn  it.  When,  however,  it  takes 
the  form  of  praising  the  theory  and  denying  the 
practise  of  the  Christian  view  of  the  world,  it  is 
more  illusive.  The  hypocrite,  himself,  is  unaware 
of  his  hypocrisy. 

Self-ignorance  is  by  no  means  the  greatest  danger 
facing  those  affected  by  community  interests.  Hy- 
pocrisy, whether  conscious  or  unconscious,  is  con- 
temptible, but  the  infusion  of  disbelief  in  the  prac- 
ticality of  Christian  ideals  is  poisonous.  And  it  is 
precisely  this  poison  that  is  eating  into  one  com- 
munity after  another.  Agnosticism  is  altogether  too 
intellectual  a  word  to  apply  to  the  religious  attitude 
of  the  rank  and  file  of  respectable  people.  They 
cannot  think  enough  to  be  agnostic.  What  they  pro- 
fess as  liberality  is  a  form  of  intellectual  laziness. 
It  is  no  more  agnosticism  than  a  fat  man  fanning 


The  Chrislian  Faith  and  the  Community     65 

himself  in  the  sun  is  an  athlete.  One  can  respect 
the  doubt  which  comes  from  a  realization  of  the 
audacity  of  the  Christian  Faith ;  but  only  a  spiritu- 
ally lazy  man  praises  comfort-seeking  as  the  rule 
of  life. 

It  is  this  moral  laziness,  this  indiiference  to  things 
of  the  spirit  now  sweeping  through  communities, 
that  causes  me  most  concern.  There  are  policemen 
for  thieves,  courts  for  profiteers,  gossip  for  gossips ; 
but  what  sort  of  nemesis  is  there  for  a  generation 
that  prefers  extravagance  to  thrift,  profits  to  eco- 
nomic justice,  Cabell  to  Thackeray,  jazz  music  to 
the  *'  Messiah,"  Mutt  and  Jeff  to  the  Last  Judgment? 
Its  difficulty  is  one  of  morale.  And  what  is  the 
difficulty  with  its  morale?  Is  it  not  a  fundamental 
disbelief  in  the  ultimate  values  of  life  as  great 
prophets,  great  poets,  and  great  souls  have  set  them 
forth?  Is  it  not  a  debilitating  indifference  to  the 
real  fundamentals  Christianity  proposes?  No  com- 
munity can  be  saved  merely  by  substituting  educa- 
tional movies  for  pictures  of  the  "  eternal  triangle," 
or  by  basketball  teams  or  swimming-pools.  Such 
measures  make  for  a  better  social  hygiene,  but  they 
do  not  make  implacably  for  a  self-sacrificing  and 
self-disciplined  community.  For  that,  men  need  to 
believe  that  there  is  a  divinely  established  moral 
order,  that  it  is  better  to  be  honest  than  to  be  suc- 
cessful, to  be  chaste  than  to  be  sexually  indulgent, 
to  be  kindly  than  to  be  masterful — in  a  word,  to  be 
like  Jesus  than  to  be  like  Pilate. 

The  Christian  Faith  is  not  without  its  doctrinal 
expression,  but  it  is  more  than  doctrines.  It  is  even 
more  than  a  confiding  trust  in  a  Saviour  from  the 
results  of  sin,  precious  as  that  is.     From  the  days 


66     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

of  Augustine  men  have  seen  that  such  trust  impHes 
a  view  of  life  and  imagination-daring  convictions. 
That  God  is  good  and  fatherly,  that  there  is  a  moral 
order  as  infrangible  as  the  cosmic  force,  that  broth- 
erliness  is  life  in  accord  with  the  divine  will  ex- 
pressed in  that  order,  that  destruction  and  v/ide- 
spread  misery  waits  upon  the  defiance  of  justice, 
that  God  will  help  men  and  communities  when  once 
they  seriously  undertake  to  live  in  accordance  with 
the  way  of  love  revealed  in  God's  self-revelation  in 
Jesus  Christ — these  are  the  elements  of  a  faith  the 
Christian  alone  fully  possesses.  Such  a  faith  makes 
men  hopeful  as  well  as  brotherly.  To  them  life  in 
accord  with  such  a  faith  is  not  a  forlorn  hope  of 
heroes  doomed  to  defeat,  but  new  progress  in  the 
development  of  powers  and  happiness  implicit  in  a 
race  that  is  more  than  chemical  compounds  or  ani- 
malistic survival.  Such  a  faith  grows  with  knowl- 
edge as  the  awful  depths  of  a  star  cluster  are  re- 
vealed by  the  telescope  and  spectroscope. 

The  world  over,  communities  are  suffering  just 
because  they  do  not  believe  these  fundamentals  of 
the  Christian  Faith.  Social  confusion  will  continue 
until  men  possess  this  faith.  Social  amelioration  does 
not  necessarily  mean  social  progress.  If  the  Chris- 
tian Faith  is  to  have  an  influence  in  any  community 
it  must  begin  by  the  production  of  lives  which  will 
make  that  community  more  than  a  collection  of  men 
and  women  indifferent  to  supreme  values  and  de- 
sirous of  "  enjoying  "  life.  Communities  like  in- 
dividuals need  to  be  convicted  of  sin  and  righteous- 
ness and  the  judgment. 

Our  attention  has  often  been  called  these  last  two 
months  to  the  Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan.    I  find  my- 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     67 

self  wondering  how  large  a  residuum  of  positive 
moral  idealism  and  power  our  celebrations  and  lec- 
tures concerning  these  worthies  have  deposited. 
Judging  from  such  observations  that  I  have  been 
able  to  make,  these  celebrations  look  a  good  deal  like 
the  children's  building  tombs  for  prophets  their 
fathers  killed.  Three  centuries  too  often  are  a  non- 
conductor between  ourselves  and  Plymouth  Rock. 
The  moment  an  ideal  becomes  the  exclusive  property 
of  the  historian  and  the  archeologist  it  is  likely  to 
appear  an  anachronism.  Something  of  that  fate 
has  befallen  the  ideals  of  the  seventeenth  century. 
We  have  been  told  we  need  to  have  them;  but  the 
rank  and  file  of  people  have  said  in  effect :  "  To  have 
such  ideals  means  to  live  in  log  houses,  to  suffer  from 
cold  and  hunger.  We  are  thankful  to  these  ancestors 
of  ours  for  all  they  endured ;  but  by  the  power  of  our 
right  hands  and  the  comfort-producing  machinery 
of  our  economic  order,  we  do  not  propose  to  under- 
take any  such  discomfort !  "  We  are  trying  to  make 
the  ideals  of  the  Mayflower  travel  in  vast  steamships 
with  dancing  salons,  and  the  ideals  which  men  car- 
ried in  ox-carts  travel  in  Pullman  cars.  I  do  not 
mean  to  say  that  we  altogether  lack  persons  with 
the  Pilgrim's  hope  and  the  Puritan's  conscience. 
Let  us  be  thankful  they  are  scattered  throughout 
the  land.  But  I  do  mean  to  say  that  no  community 
will  be  a  Plymouth  colony  or  a  Massachusetts  Bay 
colony,  if  it  does  not  have  the  pervasive  and  inde- 
structible faith  of  those  who  dared  suffer  in  order 
that  they  might  have  what  was  worth  more  to  them 
than  creature  comfort. 

The  Christian  Faith  of  men  and  women  must 
break  the  control  by  hedonistic  morals  over  young 


68     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

and  old.  That  means  the  conversion  of  individuals 
as  an  indispensable  condition  of  a  better  community 
life.  The  new  conditions  of  life,  the  new  phase  of 
our  economic  development,  the  new  personal  status 
of  women,  the  new  spirit  of  organized  labor  are  all 
demanding  that  we  take  again  an  inventory  of  our 
moral  and  religious  assets.  Are  we  sufficiently 
equipped  with  unswerving  confidence  in  the  things 
of  the  spirit  to  Christianize  the  social  order  which 
is  in  the  making?  No  satisfactory  answer  can  be 
given  to  such  a  question  if  we  neglect  real  men  and 
women.  Abstract  ideals  must  be  made  concrete  in 
human  action.  Men  and  women  of  influence  in  the 
labor  movement  as  well  as  among  the  intelligentsia 
must  be  persuaded  that  the  Christian  religion  is 
something  more  than  an  appendage  of  bourgeois 
democracy  and  that  the  words  of  Jesus  are  more 
than  an  esthetic  appeal  to  sentimental  souls.  Such 
an  end  cannot  be  accomplished  by  advertising,  bud- 
get-making, "  intensive  drives,"  mass-meetings,  and 
resolutions.  These  have  their  value ;  but  in  the  long 
run  a  community  will  be  a  proper  place  in  which  to 
live  when  it  has  been  made  so  by  the  people  who  live 
in  it.  This  sounds  paradoxical  but  it  is  the  truth. 
A  church  is  the  expression  of  the  Christian  Faith 
when  it  can  transform  individuals  in  its  community 
to  believe  with  all  their  might,  mind,  and  soul  in  God 
and  justice,  in  Jesus  Christ  and  brotherliness.  Chris- 
tian Faith  of  this  sort  can  be  and  must  be  incarnate 
in  folks.  When  a  man  becomes  intelligently  like 
Jesus  his  attitudes  become  contagious.  He  injects 
into  friendship  the  values  that  are  more  than  pass- 
ing pleasures.  He  reenforces  belief  in  others  that 
self-discipline  is  better  than  self-indulgence,  that 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  Community     69 

human  development  lies  along  the  line  of  spiritual 
struggle  rather  than  of  sensuous  pleasure,  that  to 
improve  the  mind  is  better  than  to  learn  a  new  dance 
step,  that  to  organize  life  for  the  benefit  of  others 
is  more  profitable  than  to  grow  rich,  that  to  give 
justice  is  better  than  to  fight  for  rights.  When  the 
church  has  produced  people  of  this  sort,  and  has 
nurtured  and  educated  them  in  the  acceptance  of 
such  moral  ideals,  it  has  made  its  greatest  contribu- 
tion to  the  life  of  the  community.  Its  Christian  Faith 
has  found  incarnation  in  persons  who  make  the  com- 
munity. This  may  appear  to  some  men  old-fash- 
ioned religion,  but  it  is  indispensable  if  our  modern 
life  is  to  be  saved  from  moral  debility.  The  mission 
of  the  church  will  not  be  the  mission  of  Christian 
Faith  until  it  makes  people  safe  for  community  life. 
The  kingdom  of  God  cannot  be  built  of  communities 
composed  of  those  who  neither  forgive  nor  aid  one 
another. 


Thus  by  afl^ecting  customs  and  individuals  the 
Christian  Faith  can  help  the  community  grow  Chris- 
tian. In  no  better  way  can  it  make  itself  felt.  For 
thus  alone  can  it  inspire  permanently  efforts  at  re- 
form and  community  improvement.  Dynamic  is 
what  reformers  particularly  need  just  now.  For 
there  are  not  only  open  doors  before  them,  but  many 
contenders. 

We  need  the  Christian's  faith  in  God  if  we  are 
to  have  power  to  make  the  sacrifices  proper  com- 
munity life  enjoins.  We  need  the  Christian's  faith 
in  the  possibility  of  saved  individuals  if  we  are  to 
work  for  men  and  women  who  are  socially  listless 


70     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

and  economically  hopeless.  It  is  men  and  women 
with  this  sort  of  faith  that  the  community  needs. 
It  is  the  Christian  Faith  which  will  make  the  leaders 
of  a  community  Christlike.  Only  with  its  aid  can 
the  community  be  led  to  take  Jesus  Christ  seriously. 
Who  can  be  faithful  without  him  or  who  can  be  fear- 
ful with  him?  This  is  indeed  the  victory  that  over- 
comes the  world — our  faith. 


Ill 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
STATE 

V 

By  William  Douglas  Mackenzie,  D.  D.,  LL.  D., 

President  of  Hartford  Theological  Seminary 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
STATE 


THE  Founder  of  the  Christian  Faith  was  involved 
from  the  first  in  a  situation  which  was  created  by 
the  presence  in  Palestine  and  Syria  of  the  represen- 
tatives of  the  Roman  Emperor,  and  the  continuous 
struggle  of  the  Jewish  nation  to  free  itself  from  an 
alien  yoke.  From  that  day  to  this,  throughout  the 
history  of  the  Church,  the  Christian  Faith  has  been 
kept  in  continuous  contact  with  the  governments  of 
all  regions  which  it  has  invaded.  For  three  cen- 
turies it  lived  as  the  victim  of  imperial  hostility, 
seeking  to  crush  its  life.  In  the  Middle  Ages  the 
position  was  almost  reversed  when  the  Church 
sought  to  be  the  ruler  of  all  the  rulers  of  Europe. 
In  modern  times  the  Church  has  assumed  many 
different  types  of  relationship  with  the  multiform 
governments  of  the  whole  world. 

Into  the  history  of  the  relations  between  the 
Christian  Faith  and  the  successive  forms  of  govern- 
ment through  two  thousand  years  we  cannot  enter 
here.  It  is  with  the  modern  situation  that  we  are 
to  be  concerned,  and  historical  references  will  be 
only  such  as  are  necessary  to  illustrate  definite 
points  in  our  discussion.  We  shall  therefore  confine 
our  statements  to  four  main  topics : 

I.  The  Nation  and  its  varied  Forms  of  Life. 

II.  The  Christian  Faith  and  its  Place  in  the  Na- 
tional Life. 

F 


74     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

HI.  The  Relation  between  the  Christian  Faith  or 
Community  and  the  Modern  State. 

IV.  The  Christian  Faith  and  the  New  Interna- 
tionalism. 

I.  THE  NATION  AND  ITS  VARIED  FORMS 
OF  LIFE 

During  the  last  twenty  years  there  is  a  significant 
change,  at  least  in  the  English-speaking  world,  in 
the  manner  of  discussing  the  fundamental  questions 
suggested  by  the  words,  the  State  and  the  Nation. 
Before  that  we  had  works  like  Bluntschli's  famous 
treatise  on  "The  State,"  and  Bosanquet's  "Philo- 
sophical Theory  of  the  State."  By  these  writers 
the  primary  approach  to  the  problems  of  the  na- 
tional life  was  found  in  an  exposition  of  the  mean- 
ing of  the  state.  That  method  arose  naturally  in 
an  age  when  dynasties  ruled,  when  a  man  could 
say,  L'etat  c'est  moi,^  and  peoples  existed  for  their 
kings.  Nationality  was  then  understood  through 
the  range  of  power  exerted  by  the  rulers  of  the  day. 
Boundaries  were  fixed  by  wars  and  their  resultant 
treaties,  and  nations  were  looked  upon  as  the  realms 
over  which  certain  men  ruled.  It  seemed  inevitable 
in  such  conditions  to  speak  as  if  the  idea  of  the  state 
is  logically  prior  to  that  of  the  nation,  as  if  the  state 
is  a  power  which  produces  nationality  and  controls 
all  interests. 

But  a  vast  change  has  swept  over  these  discus- 
sions. Recent  works  on  the  subject  have  such  titles 
as  "The  Great  Society"  (Graham  Wallas),  "The 
Society  of  Nations  "  (Lawrence) ,  "  Social  Purpose  " 

1 "  I  am  the  State." 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  75 

(Hetherington  and  Muirhead),  "The  Pschology  of 
Nationality  and  Internationalism"  (Pillsbury), 
"The  Morality  of  Nations"  (C.  D.  Burns).  All 
these  books  discuss  the  state  through  the  nation  and 
not  the  nation  through  the  state. 

The  change  is  of  very  great  significance.  For  it 
means  that  we  must  first  understand  what  is  meant 
by  a  nation,  we  must  first  consider  the  fulness  of 
the  modern  national  life,  before  we  can  understand 
and  define  the  nature  and  functions  of  the  state.  It 
would  lead  us  too  far  from  our  present  task  if  we 
attempted  to  describe  the  various  conditions  under 
which  the  nations,  which  are  recognized  as  such, 
have  developed,  or  their  varieties  of  organization 
and  of  political  relationship.  We  must  take  the 
modern  Western  nation  as  it  exists  with  the  power 
of  self-government,  self-direction,  in  all  the  vital 
affairs  of  its  internal  life.  For  this  purpose  Canada 
is  a  nation,  though  within  the  British  Empire,  as 
truly  as  the  United  States. 

If  we  look  closely  into  the  life  of  any  modern 
nation  we  are  struck  with  the  immense  variety  and 
complexity  of  its  active  life.  That  life  is  charac- 
terized by  spontaneity.  It  not  only  creates  its  vast 
forms  of  industry,  its  innumerable  institutions  and 
forms  of  education,  its  means  of  transportation,  its 
ever-increasing  agencies  of  philanthropy,  its  modes 
of  producing  and  disseminating  art  in  all  its  many 
forms  of  expression,  its  religious  ideals  and  the  or- 
ganized associations  for  the  pursuit  of  those  ideals ; 
the  modern  nation  also  creates  its  mode  of  govern- 
ment. The  modern  nation  does  not  receive  the 
varied  contents  of  its  life  as  gifts  from  its  govern- 
ment.    The  state  does  not  produce  them,  and  the 


76     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

state  cannot  in  any  full  and  real  sense  control  them. 
They  arise  from  the  spontaneous  action,  the  creative 
faculty,  of  the  national  consciousness.  Even  the 
state  itself  is  in  modern  days  looked  upon  not  as 
a  fixed  quantity,  but  as  a  definite  form  of  organiza- 
tion which  itself  is  created  out  of  national  life  and 
which  is  therefore  plastic  in  its  form,  in  its  rela- 
tion to  that  national  life,  and  in  its  relation  to  all 
the  other  institutions  which  are  equally  essential  to 
and  the  product  of  the  same  life.  It  is  not  as  to  its 
form  created  from  above  either  by  God  or  king.  It 
is  simply  the  agency  by  which  the  nation  seeks  to 
fulfil  its  fundamental  purposes  and  through  which 
it  aims  at  bringing  all  the  organized  expressions  of 
its  life  into  harmonious  relations  with  one  another 
and  its  whole  life  into  harmonious  relations  with  the 
whole  life  of  other  nations. 

For  this  reason  the  state,  or  national  government, 
is  the  one  institution  with  which  all  the  citizens  must 
reckon,  the  fountain  of  all  public  law,  the  guarantor 
of  justice  and  liberty,  the  creator  of  that  order  with- 
in which  the  people  can  pursue  their  legitimate 
callings  and  their  personal  ideals. 

Further,  because  the  state,  that  is  to  say  the  na- 
tional government,  is  accepted  as  the  highest  of  all 
the  forms  in  which  the  national  spirit  takes  definite 
shape,  it  follows  that  in  great  crises  of  national  life, 
especially  when  it  is  brought  into  competition  with 
other  states  and  nations,  it  is  treated  as  if  it  were 
in  fact  identical  with  the  nation  as  a  whole.  It  then 
becomes  the  symbol  of  patriotism  and  the  supreme 
instrument  for  defending  and  realizing  the  life  of 
each  citizen  and  the  whole  nation  to  which  he  be- 
longs.   This  apparent  identification  of  the  modern 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  77 

state  with  the  nation  is,  however,  only  apparently 
complete  in  times  of  inward  stress,  in  its  relations 
with  other  peoples,  and  especially  in  times  of  active 
warfare.  Internally  the  state,  taken  as  the  form  of 
supreme  self-government,  is  always  treated  as  a 
variable  organ,  liable  to  repeated  change  in  its  per- 
sonnel, and  even  to  fundamental  changes  in  its  con- 
stitution. Hence  it  is  that  the  modern  state,  in  spite 
of  the  vast  power  which  is  committed  to  it,  finds 
itself  increasingly  considered  as  a  very  definite  and 
limited  organ  of  the  national  life.  This  is  due  in 
part  to  the  obvious  fact  that  the  national  life  has 
become  so  complex  and  vast  that  no  one  group  of 
men  can  have  cognizance  of  all  its  acts  and  move- 
ments, can  be  prepared  to  consider  in  advance  all 
its  interests  or  to  interpret  accurately  from  day  to 
day  and  year  to  year  all  its  purposes.  No  one  man 
has  brains  enough,  even  when  assisted  by  a  powerful 
cabinet  of  a  dozen  or  twenty  men,  to  take  the  initia- 
tive and  maintain  the  complete  active  direction  of 
all  the  interests  and  of  all  the  organized  activities 
of  a  whole  people. 

Hence  it  is  clear  that  the  old-fashioned  form  of 
communistic  theory  according  to  which  the  state 
must  own  all  the  fundamental  resources  and  control 
all  the  developments  of  national  life,  is  a  mere  sur- 
vival of  a  dead  conception  of  the  state.  It  is  the 
attempt  to  carry  over  the  theory  of  the  state  which 
arose  in  Europe  after  the  Middle  Ages  into  an  en- 
tirely different  age,  where  it  is  completely  inappli- 
cable. Apart  altogether  from  the  truth  of  its  ideals, 
a  fully  developed  communistic  theory  is  simply  ab- 
surd when  it  tries  to  establish  a  commonwealth  of 
the  ancient  type.     The  state  as  an  organized  form 


78     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

of  government  does  not  and  cannot  be  the  equivalent 
of,  cannot  reflect  completely  and  direct  with  the 
omniscience  and  omnipotence  it  would  require,  the 
whole  spiritual  and  material  life,  the  entire  action 
of  a  vast  people.  Any  attempt  of  a  modern  state 
to  do  this  would  result  simply  in  stifling  that  creative 
spontaneity  which  we  have  seen  to  be  the  charac- 
teristic of  the  modern  national  consciousness.  No 
civil  service  and  no  group  of  politicians,  even  when 
they  are  freely  elected  by  the  people,  can  be  con- 
ceived of  who  can  invent  and  create  for  the  whole 
people.  As  a  matter  of  experience  it  is  found  that 
even  with  the  best  intentions  and  even  in  times  of 
war,  when  all  men  are  working  patriotically  and  at 
the  top  of  their  power,  men  placed  in  authority 
cannot  keep  up  with  the  explosive  energy  of  the 
people. 

That  energy,  working  in  the  life  of  every  citizen, 
creates  all  the  varied  organizations  from  a  small 
club  of  people  met  for  esthetic  pursuits  to  a  vast 
industrial  organization.  These  various  institutions 
have  their  right  of  existence  as  truly  as  the  state. 
They  are  the  products  of  democracy  as  really  as  the 
government  with  its  constitution.  They  are  as  nec- 
essary to  the  life  of  the  modern  nation  as  the  state 
itself. 

We  must  therefore  more  boldly  than  ever  and  in 
presence  of  all  the  facts  insist  that  the  state  in  its 
meaning  and  activities  can  never  be  coterminous 
with  the  nation  in  its  meaning  and  activities.  If 
the  state  is  the  supreme  form  which  the  national 
consciousness  assumes  both  for  regulating  its  in- 
ternal life  and  its  external  relations,  it  must  be 
recognized  that  the  national  life  has  many  other 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  79 

ways  in  which  it  does  the  same  work  in  both  direc- 
tions. The  state  exists  not  to  create  these  great 
provinces  of  action  but  only  to  devise  and  enforce 
those  general  conditions  of  law  in  which  the  energy 
of  the  nation  shall  operate.  One  writer  has  put  it,^ 
"  The  modern  state  generally  does  not  supply  re- 
ligion or  food  or  clothing,  even  though  it  makes  the 
supply  of  such  needs  possible  by  law  and  order." 
And  again  the  same  writer  says,^  "  The  modern  life 
is  an  orderly  democracy  of  varied  interests,  and 
the  relation  of  the  institutions  which  supply  those 
interests  is  therefore  democratic."  When  a  national 
demand  is  clear  and  a  definite  need  is  proved,  as 
in  the  case  for  example  of  education,  the  state  can 
do  much  to  guide  the  aim  of  the  people  and  to  stimu- 
late the  ardor  with  which  it  is  pursued.  But  even 
in  such  a  matter  experience  proves  that  paralysis 
will  come  if  the  state  so  completely  controls  educa- 
tion or  art  or  industry  as  to  stifle  originality.  That 
is  to  be  found  not  in  the  selected  group  even  of  wisest 
statesmen,  but  in  the  vast  commerce  of  the  people 
with  one  another  and  in  the  free  concentration  of  the 
attention  of  many  individuals  upon  this  or  that  liv- 
ing interest. 

Amongst  the  supreme  interests  of  the  national 
life  we  must  name  religion.  For  human  nature  is 
fundamentally  spiritual.  Man  does  not  exist  to 
employ  his  intellectual,  moral,  and  spiritual  powers 
merely  for  the  sake  of  his  material  experiences.  He 
exists  that  he  may  use  and  control  his  natural  life 
for  the  purpose  of  his  spiritual.  Religion  is  coeval 
and  coextensive  with  the  human  race,  and  the  re- 

»C.  D.  Burns,  "The  Morality  of  Nations,"  p.  34. 
•Ibid.,  p.  37. 


80     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

ligious  life  of  a  nation  is  at  least  as  dear  to  it  as 
the  authority  and  dignity  of  its  national  government. 
The  national  life  throws  up  as  it  were  one  kind  of 
organization  for  industry,  another  kind  of  organiza- 
tion for  the  culture  of  the  mind,  and  another  kind 
of  organization  for  the  regulation  of  its  life  as  a 
whole,  which  we  call  the  state.  It  also  throws  up 
another  kind  of  organization  through  which  alone 
it  can  express  and  realize  its  moral  ideals  and  its 
consciousness  of  spiritual  relations,  and  a  spiritual 
destiny.  And  that  organization  is  known  in  Chris- 
tendom as  the  Church. 

In  the  modern  world  with  which  we  are  imme- 
diately concerned  the  national  consciousness  on  its 
spiritual  side  receives  its  form  from  and  expresses 
itself  in  the  principles  and  ideals  of  the  Christian 
religion.  Our  special  task,  with  the  background 
which  we  have  sketched  of  the  state  in  its  relation 
to  the  life  of  the  nation,  is  to  discover  how  the  Chris- 
tian faith  which  is  thus  related  to  the  essential  life 
of  the  people  stands  related  to  the  state,  and  how  the 
state  must  be  expected  in  the  future  to  relate  itself 
to  this  faith  and  to  the  organizations  which  it  has 
created  in  the  midst  of  the  national  life. 

II.  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  ITS  RELA- 
TION TO  THE  NATIONAL  LIFE 

We  have  seen  that  the  state  exists  in  a  modern 
world  as  the  definite  creation  of  the  national  life. 
It  exists  for  the  common  political  good  of  the  whole 
people  in  their  internal  life  and  in  their  relations 
with  other  peoples.  We  have  also  seen  that  there 
are  other  forms  of  "  good  "  which  the  nation  pursues 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  81 

through  other  organizations.  These  the  state  does 
not  create.  They  spring  from  the  fundamental  needs 
of  human  nature  in  its  relations  to  "  good  "  and  to 
the  world  in  which  we  live.  They  include  all  that 
we  mean  by  religious,  esthetic,  scientific,  industrial, 
economic,  and  educational  institutions.  The  state 
we  have  seen  to  be  of  supreme  importance  because 
it  is  created  to  establish  the  general  conditions  of 
justice  and  order,  on  the  basis  of  freedom,  within 
which  the  other  institutions  can  operate  securely 
and  obtain  those  forms  of  good  for  which  the  na- 
tional life  has  produced  them. 

It  is  from  this  point  of  view  that  we  must  ap- 
proach the  fact  that  in  the  midst  of  modern  nations 
we  find  the  Christian  church  as  the  organization 
through  which  the  Christian  Faith  operates. 

The  Christian  Faith  appeared  in  a  world  where 
Church  and  State  were  so  to  speak  one.  Alike  the 
theocracy  of  the  Jews  and  the  Empire  of  Rome 
were  unable  to  separate  in  idea  or  in  practise  the 
organization  of  the  national  life  for  government 
and  for  religion.  Jesus  separated  them.  He  did 
this  partly  by  his  new  and  even  catastrophic  em- 
phasis upon  the  relation  of  the  individual  soul  to 
God  which  he  revealed  as  being  direct,  immediate, 
and  momentous.  Partly  he  did  it  by  the  manner  in 
which  he  formed  his  new  community,  establishing 
the  conditions  and  aims  of  its  existence.  He  created 
it  out  of  those  individuals  who  in  response  to  his 
call  on  their  souls  came  into  direct  dealings  with 
God.  On  the  basis  of  their  relationship  to  himself 
as  the  revealer  of  God  he  formed  them  into  a  definite 
community. 

I  speak  here  thus  definitely  and  concretely  because 


82     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

much  of  modern  discussion  of  this  subject  is  charac- 
terized by  vagueness  and  an  air  of  unreaHty  which 
results  in  darkness  rather  than  light.  For  example, 
let  me  take  the  following  paragraph :  * 

From  the  point  of  view  thus  reached  there  can  be  no  essen- 
tial opposition  between  the  spirit  of  citizenship  and  the  spirit 
of  religion.  The  one  means  the  soul's  response  to  the  most 
concentrated  and  coherent  embodiment  of  the  Will  to  Good 
which  the  human  spirit  has  yet  been  able  to  realize.  The 
other  is  itself  a  response  to  those  features  of  the  world  at 
large — its  beauty,  goodness,  and  truth — in  which  the  capa- 
bilities developed  in  and  through  this  embodiment  find  the 
highest  field  of  their  exercise  and  the  guarantee  of  their 
essential  value. 

No  thinking  on  the  relations  of  Church  and  State 
can  be  clear  and  real  which  thus  dissolves  the  Church 
into  a  mist  of  ideals  and  speaks  of  it  in  the  vague  as 
"  a  response  '*  of  the  soul,  a  pursuit  of  "  the  true, 
the  beautiful,  and  the  good,"  while  it  describes  the 
State  as  a  concrete  embodiment  with  really  exag- 
gerated functions.  One  must  deprecate  the  air  of 
unreality  which  haunts  discussions  like  this.  The 
state  can  never  be  what  these  authors  say  it  is.  Its 
functions  can  never  be  as  all-inclusive  and  as 
morally  penetrating  as  they  seem  to  suggest.  On 
the  other  hand,  religion  can  never  penetrate  the 
whole  life  of  motive  and  character  if  it  can  only  be 
described  in  misty  verbiage  like  that. 

With  Jesus  there  is  no  such  vagueness.  Con- 
fronted with  political  organizations  on  every  hand, 
several  of  which  united  to  crucify  him,  he  creates 
not  an  abstract  system  of  ideals,  not  even  an  unem- 
bodied  spirit.    He  creates  the  new  community.    His 

*  Hetherington  and  Muirhead,  "  Social  Purpose,"  p.  310. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  83 

community  does  indeed  possess  ideals  and  is  imbued 
with  the  spirit  of  religion.  But  it  is  a  concrete  com- 
munity established  on  definite  principles.  It  cannot 
be  political  because  the  very  nature  of  its  relations 
with  God  makes  it  in  essence  international  and 
interracial.  It  came  to  be  spoken  of,  as  Harnack 
has  pointed  out,°  as  the  **  new  nation  "  destined  to 
penetrate  all  nations  and  to  fill  all  states  with  a  new 
form  of  the  human  spirit.  Our  Lord  met  the  pres- 
sure of  a  political  situation  with  the  famous  utter- 
ance about  rendering  "  to  Caesar  the  things  that  are 
Caesar's,  and  to  God  the  things  that  are  God's."  He 
there  definitely  acknowledges  the  authority  of  the 
state  as  truly  as  the  authority  of  God.  He  does  not 
enter  upon  any  discussion  of  the  way  in  which  in 
the  times  to  come  the  one  authority  will  deal  with 
the  other,  but  he  insists  that  his  community  shall 
be  one  that  acknowledges  both. 

It  would  be  shallow  thinking  to  suggest  that  Jesus 
there  described  the  authority  of  Csesar  as  having 
no  relation  to  God.  His  great  apostle  Paul,  in  a  pas- 
sage which  reveals  his  knowledge  of  this  saying  of 
Jesus,  or  something  like  it,  asserts  in  round  terms 
that  **  the  powers  that  be  are  ordained  of  God  " 
(Rom.  13  :  Iff.).  This  great  Christian  thinker  has 
discovered,  as  none  of  the  philosophers  of  Greece  or 
Rome  had  been  able  to  discover,  the  ultimate  basis 
of  the  state.  It  is  of  divine  origin,  established  to 
preserve  order,  to  administer  justice.  Hence  it  is 
Christian  piety  to  honor  the  king  and  to  obey  him 
when  he  acts  for  God.  But  with  this  insight  a  new 
power  has  entered  into  the  history  of  nations  and 
states.    For,  if  rulers  act  under  the  authority  of  God, 

5"  The  Expansion  of  Christianity." 


84     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

then  they  are  pledged  to  act  according  to  the  char- 
acter of  God.  The  apostles  themselves  had  suffered 
much  at  the  hands  of  the  state  when  they  wrote  such 
words.  "  The  powers  that  be  "  had  done  them  gross 
injustice  time  after  time.  But  the  marvelously  clear 
mind  of  the  great  thinker  was  able  to  discriminate 
between  the  ideal  of  an  institution  and  the  misinter- 
pretation of  that  ideal,  the  misuse  of  the  power  in- 
herent in  that  institution  when  those  in  whose  hands 
its  work  was  placed  did  wrong. 

Throughout  the  history  of  the  early  church  we 

fmd  this  double  movement  of  feeling  and  thought. 

The  Christian  folk  cherished  a  profound  reverence 

for  and  even  confidence  in  the  authority  of  the  very 

emperors  whose  injustice  they  proclaimed.     They 

continued  to  protest  against  the  acts  of  wrong  that 

were  done,  but  they  never  suggested  that  the  cure 

/of  evil  thus  done  could  be  gained  by  the  overturn 

iOr  annihilation  of  the  state.     They  appealed  from 

I  the  injustice  of  an  emperor  to  his  true  function  as 

the  representative  of  the  law  of  God. 

The  new  fact  in  the  world  was  this,  that  the  Chris- 
tian Faith  had  created  a  community  of  persons  who 
knew  God,  while  the  ancient  state  with  which  they 
had  to  do  consisted  of  men  who  knew  not  God.  In 
ignorance  and  darkness,  with  only  glimmering  lights 
upon  the  great  laws  of  righteousness  and  mercy, 
these  ancient  rulers  acted,  unconscious  of  the  high- 
est dignity  of  their  office,  even  when  their  ambi- 
tions soared  highest,  unaware  of  the  august  throne 
in  the  light  of  which  their  thrones  were  erected.  The 
new  organization  arose  as  a  community  whose  mem- 
bers owned  Jesus  Christ  as  King  and  Emperor  of 
their  souls.     This  allegiance  was  supreme,  and  all 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  85 

other  loyalties  received  from  it  at  once  their  meaning 
and  their  consecration. 

After  Constantine  the  Christian  Faith  entered 
into  a  new  relation  with  the  State,  and  from  that 
day  to  this  Church  and  State  have  made  many  ex- 
periments which  have  created  a  large  part  of  the 
intricate  history  of  European  peoples.  At  the  one 
extreme  we  have  had  Erastianism,  with  its  doctrine 
that  the  Church  is  merely  a  function  of  the  State; 
at  the  other  extreme  the  ideal  of  the  Holy  Roman 
Empire,  according  to  which  the  State  should  be 
under  the  complete  direction  of  the  organized 
Church. 

Into  that  history  we  cannot  go.  We  must  ask 
ourselves  only  what  is  the  position  today  of  the  per- 
ennial problem  of  the  relation  of  these  two  supreme 
institutions  to  one  another.  In  attempting  to  do 
this  we  must  once  more  restate  the  function  of 
each.  The  state  exists  as  the  embodiment  of  the 
conscious  unified  life  of  the  nation.  It  is  an  or- 
ganization created  primarily  in  relation  to  the  tem- 
poral interests,  individual  and  social,  of  its  citizens, 
with  authority  over  the  organizations  which  they 
create.  Its  function  is  to  establish  those  conditions 
under  which  the  peaceful  and  harmonious  pursuit 
of  all  these  varied  ends  may  be  carried  on.  For 
this  purpose  it  uses  legislation  and  force.  It  cannot 
exist,  it  cannot  accomplish  its  ends,  in  a  world  like 
ours  where  the  explosion  of  individual  selfishness  is 
so  constant  and  so  mighty,  without  the  power  to 
exact  a  penalty  for  deliberate  breaches  of  the  law. 

On  the  other  hand  the  church,  as  the  organized 
embodiment  of  the  Christian  Faith,  has  become  in 
Christendom  the  chief  expression  of  that  fundamen- 


86     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

tal  human  consciousness  that  we  live  in  a  spiritual 
universe  with  definite  spiritual  relations.  It  also  is 
organized  on  definite  principles  which  are  the  laws 
of  its  being,  without  which  it  cannot  maintain  its 
life  and  do  its  work  for  human  nature.  It  cannot 
be  described  in  mere  abstract  terms  in  an  effort  to 
find  a  community  of  purpose  and  meaning  between 
the  Christian  Faith  and  other  religions.  That  effort, 
justified  in  other  discussions  and  for  other  ends,  has 
no  place  when  we  are  discussing  the  relation  of 
Church  and  State  in  a  Christian  land.  It  is  not  a 
group  of  casual  enthusiasts  who  have  met  to  discuss 
far-off  ideals  of  a  purely  personal  or  esthetic  kind, 
and  to  wonder  where  and  how  they  can  begin  to 
realize  them.  The  Christian  Church  is  as  truly  an 
embodiment  of  a  definite  form  of  life  as  the  State. 
It  has  inherent  principles  which  are  actual,  real, 
living  forces.  It  is  not  merely  flying  skywards  after 
the  true  and  the  beautiful  and  the  good :  it  is  walk- 
ing upon  the  earth  with  solid  tread  in  the  conscious 
possession  of  an  actual  power  of  life.  Emersonian 
transcendentalism  can  never  describe  it,  nor  general 
philosophical  summaries  of  the  meaning  of  all  re- 
ligions. The  Christian  Faith  means  the  organization 
I  of  a  definite  community  on  definite  principles  which 
1  are  the  laws  of  its  existence.  Ideals  for  other  in- 
stitutions, they  are  the  fundamental  realities  of  this 
institution.  Primary  powers  in  it,  they  must  become 
the  controlling  ethical  qualities  of  all  organizations 
whose  sources  lie  in  other  regions  of  man's  compos- 
ite nature.  Industry  has  its  own  origin  and  princi- 
ples, esthetics  springs  from  needs  that  are  other  than 
religious ;  but  neither  industry  nor  esthetics  can  be 
pursued  by  individuals  or  by  organized  communities 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  87 

without  coming  under  moral  conditions  which  re- 
ceive their  supreme  illumination  from  that  com- 
munity which  penetrates  them  all  with  its  own  prin- 
ciples of  character  and  of  conduct. 

The  church  which  thus  springs  as  truly  from  the 
national  life,  from  a  fundamental  need  of  human 
nature,  as  any  other  institution,  has  yet  come  down 
from  God.  It  has  a  distinctness  of  historic  origin 
which  distinguishes  it  from  all  others.  Moreover,  it 
lives  as  the  embodiment  in  human  experience  of  the 
mercy  of  God,  and  it  lives  on  that  mercy.  It  is 
founded  in  an  act  of  divine  sacrifice  and  can  only 
live  its  life  and  do  its  work  for  men  in  the  spirit  of 
that  sacrifice.  It  is  consciously  responsible  to  One 
whose  authority  is  supreme  and  whose  presence  in 
its  life  is  constant,  who  needs  no  vicar  and  has  no 
successor  since  he  is  the  same,  ever-living,  ever- 
active,  yesterday,  today,  and  forever.  It  cannot  and  _(. 
dare  not  use  force,  as  the  State  must,  any  more  than 
the  State  can  condone  crime  in  the  name  of  mercy  "^ 
and  remain  a  living  State.  The  Church  can  only 
love,  and  endure,  and  forgive.  If  the  State  is  ever 
to  embody  the  principle  of  love  it  can  only  be  when 
the  entire  mass  of  the  nation  has  become  penetrated 
by  that  spirit  which  is  the  very  life  and  sole  essen- 
tial being  of  the  Church. 

III.  THE   RELATION  BETWEEN  THE  CHRIS- 
TIAN FAITH  OR  COMMUNITY  AND 
THE  MODERN  STATE 

It  is  plain  from  what  has  been  said  that  in  each 
national  life  two  supreme  institutions  confront  each 
other,  namely,  the  State  and  the   Church.     Each 


88     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

exists  for  the  good  of  the  nation.  We  have  taken 
the  view  that  each  is  the  expression  of  the  national 
Hfe  in  certain  of  its  deep  necessities,  and  that  each 
has  a  profound  influence  after  its  own  kind  upon 
all  the  other  interests  and  institutions  of  that  life. 
Neither  of  these  institutions  can  subordinate  itself 
to  the  other.  As  Forsyth  has  put  it :  "^  "  The  democ- 
racy will  recognize  no  authority  but  what  it  creates. 
The  Church  none  but  what  creates  it.''  The  same 
writer  again  says :  ^  "  The  sovereignty  of  the  people 
was  from  autonomy  in  their  civil  and  secular  affairs, 
and  not  in  all ;  it  was  arrested  at  the  threshold  of  the 
Church.  .  .  So  that  we  have  the  sovereignty  of  the 
people  in  worldly  affairs  and  Christ  in  spiritual." 
The  State  is  subordinate  to  the  law  of  its  own  nature, 
which  is  that  it  exists  as  the  expression  of  the 
realized  unity  of  the  nation.  Citizens  obey  it  as 
long  as  it  fulfils  its  function.  The  nation  is  the  ulti- 
mate authority  over  both  the  form  and  action  of  the 
State.  The  Church,  on  the  other  hand,  is  subor- 
dinate to  the  law  of  its  own  existence,  which  lies  in 
its  consciousness  of  the  indwelling  of  the  divine  life 
and  of  the  authority  of  the  spirit  and  will  of  Jesus 
Christ,  its  Founder  and  its  continuous  Lord.  While 
the  Church  cannot  employ  the  force  wielded  by  the 
State  to  promote  the  spiritual  aims  of  the  Church 
without  destroying  its  own  work,  denying  its  own 
spirit,  and  abandoning  its  original  methods,  which 
are  purely  spiritual  and  moral,  personalistic  and 
persuasive,  neither  can  the  State  employ  the  meth- 
ods of  the  Church  for  the  promotion  of  its  ends. 
The  State  must  do  much  more  than  persuade,  it 

«  p.  T.  Forsyth,  "  Faith,  Freedom,  and  the  Future,"  p.  192. 
■'  Ibid.,  p.  110. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  89 

must  enforce  obedience  to  its  laws;  the  Church  can 
only  persuade. 

If  one  could  conceive  of  a  condition  where  the 
entire  nation  was  vitally  and  sincerely  of  the  Chris- 
tian Faith,  some  of  the  points  of  contrast  and  oppo- 
sition which  we  have  described  would  no  doubt  be 
modified.  It  was  in  fact  the  assumption  that  such 
a  condition  had  been  obtained  which  led  the  medieval 
Church  to  seek  a  coalescence  of  Church  and  State. 
But  the  situation  never  has  been  and  is  not  today  of 
that  kind.  The  divine  life  is  not  consciously  present 
in  all  members  of  a  modern  nation.  However  de- 
plorable the  fact  may  be,  we  must  face  it,  that  there 
are  multitudes  in  every  modern  democracy  who  lie 
outside  the  conscious  possession  of  this  spiritual  life, 
and  too  many  who  have  simply  no  interest  in  it.  Of 
these  some  are  even  intensely  hostile.  Hence  it  is 
that  problems  arise  of  a  most  important  and  acute 
kind  in  the  working  out  of  the  relations  between 
these  two  supreme  institutions  of  the  national  life. 
Let  us  see  what  these  are. 

First,  There  is  a  wide  field  where  the  Church  and 
State  can  be  of  mutual  service  to  one  another  with- 
out interfering  with  each  other's  nature  or  spirit. 
The  Church  can  by  its  teaching  and  the  example  of 
its  members  encourage  and  sustain  all  the  efforts  of 
the  State  to  legislate  wisely  and  to  enforce  its  disci- 
pline justly.  If  it  is  true,  as  the  authors  of  "  Social 
Purpose  "  affirm,^  that  "  Laws  and  institutions  de- 
rive whatever  authority  they  have,  not  from  the 
force  that  lies  behind  them,  but  from  purposes  that 
lie  deep  in  the  soul  of  the  nation  and  form  the  largest 
and  most  potent  part  of  its  will,"  then  the  task  of 

•*  Hetherlngton  and  Muiihead,  "  Social  Purpose,"  p.  20. 
G 


90     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

the  Church  is  plain;  for  it  is  just  to  inspire  true 
purposes  in  human  hearts  that  the  Church  exists. 
The  Christian  Faith  seeks  to  cleanse  the  fountain- 
heads  of  impulse  and  motive,  to  purify  the  aims  of 
all  human  beings.  Its  work,  therefore,  is  a  pre- 
supposition of  the  work  and  functions  of  the  State 
in  a  modern  democracy.  It  is  Christianity  indeed 
which  created  governmental  democracy.  All  society 
has  been  called  an  "  embodiment  of  will  and  pur- 
pose,'* and  that  is  the  region  into  which  the  State 
cannot  penetrate,  but  which  is  the  home  field  of  the 
operations  of  the  Church.  It  is  true  that  the  State 
cannot  interfere  in  the  region  of  conscience,  it  can- 
not impose  religion  upon  its  people  against  their 
will.  It  cannot  therefore  under  modern  conditions 
attempt  to  establish  or  to  enforce  the  authority  of  a 
State  Church.  But  on  the  other  hand,  it  must  not 
facilitate  opposition  to  the  Church.  Sometimes  in 
the  name  of  freedom  of  conscience  people  have 
imagined  that  the  secular  authorities  have  the  right 
to  create  or  allow  conditions  of  life  or  the  erection 
of  institutions  whose  ultimate  effect  is  to  stimulate 
prejudice  against  the  religious  life.  Many  delicate 
questions  arise  at  this  point  which  would  take  us 
into  minute  discussions  inappropriate  to  the  present 
hour.  But  the  position  must  be  very  firmly  and 
clearly  maintained  that  if  secular  authorities  are  not 
allowed  to  enforce  religion  upon  the  conscience  of 
the  people,  they  are  also  forbidden  to  establish  or 
encourage  conditions  which  affront  the  conscience 
of  the  religious  people  and  hinder  that  type  of  work 
which  the  Christian  community  alone  can  accom- 
plish for  the  good  of  the  nation. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  is  no  contravention  of  the 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  91 

principle  of  freedom,  no  interference  with  con- 
science, that  the  State  should  in  various  ways  recog- 
nize religion  as  the  supreme  interest  of  man,  and 
within  the  realms  of  Christendom,  recognize  Chris- 
tianity as  the  only  effective  embodiment  of  the  re- 
ligious spirit. 

But  this  relationship  can  only  be  healthily  main- 
tained if  it  is  clearly  understood  that  no  section  of 
the  Christian  church  shall  "  play  politics,"  as  we 
put  it.  By  this  it  is  not  meant  that  Christian  men 
in  the  spirit  of  the  church  of  Christ,  nor  even  offi- 
cials of  the  church  who  have  the  direction  of  its 
affairs,  shall  not  seek  to  influence  public  opinion  on 
all  important  matters  of  morality  and  freedom.  It 
means  simply  that  no  organized  church  shall  employ 
political  means  for  furthering  its  own  organized 
interests  as  over  against  the  interests  of  other 
organized  sections  of  Christianity.  It  means  fur- 
ther that  even  if  the  Church  were  completely  united 
within  itself,  it  must  not  seek  to  displace  the  au- 
thority of  the  State  by  the  exercise  of  the  direct 
authority  of  its  own  officials  as  if  they  were  func- 
tionaries of  the  State.  Its  influence  can  only  be  pure 
and  truly  Christian  when  it  is  confined  to  the  sole  and 
yet  greatest  task  of  all,  namely,  that  of  molding 
opinion  in  the  community  at  large  on  all  subjects  in 
which  there  can  be  no  difference  of  opinion  amongst 
men  as  to  the  fundamental  principles  of  right  and 
wrong.  No  doubt  difficulties  in  interpreting  this 
principle  must  arise.  Happy  must  the  Church  be 
which  rather  falls  short  by  avoiding  even  the  ap- 
pearance of  evil  than  the  Church  which  in  name  of  its 
desire  to  see  the  right  thing  done  takes  hold  of  the 
machinery  of  the  State  to  apply  its  own  interpreta- 


92     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

tion  of  immediate  duty.  The  principle  of  democracy 
is  being  thwarted  in  so  far  as  any  Church  organiza- 
tion seeks  to  usurp  the  power  of  the  State  or  any 
part  of  its  organization. 

Secondly,  In  addition  to  the  fields  of  mutual  ser- 
vice there  are  certain  fields  of  active  cooperation 
where  the  Christian  community  and  the  state  can 
openly  and  confessedly  work  together  for  good.  In 
the  vast  fields  of  philanthropy,  the  state  may  and 
does  appeal  to  the  Christian  community  as  such  for 
aid  in  the  establishment  and  sustenance  of  institu- 
tions which  the  state  cannot  properly  create  and 
which  it  cannot  most  effectively  conduct.  There  are 
many  institutions  where  the  security  of  success  lies 
as  much  in  the  elements  of  sympathy  and  insight,  in 
the  exercise  of  spiritual  qualities,  as  in  any  other 
features  of  the  work.  No  state  can  supply  these. 
The  tendency  of  all  state  organizations  is  to  produce 
officialism,  with  its  hardness  of  temper  towards  the 
failings  of  the  individual.  Tender  sympathies  are 
not  born  within  its  regulations,  are  not  provided  for 
by  legislation,  can  hardly  be  looked  for  in  the  admin- 
istration of  its  institutions.  So  far  as  anything  of 
sympathy  and  pity  has  entered  into  the  operations 
of  the  state,  these  have  sprung  from  the  hearts  of 
Christian  folk,  from  the  agitations  which  they  have 
carried  on,  and  from  their  ceaseless  vigilance  over 
the  operations  of  state  officials. 

In  another  field  the  State  can  depend  upon  the 
Church,  and  that  is  in  the  enforcement  of  the  laws 
of  justice  between  class  and  class.  Where  justice  is 
won  merely  by  the  rebellion  of  the  oppressed,  we 
must  fear  that  it  can  only  be  a  partial  justice  and 
temporary  in  its  life  and  value.    It  is  only  when  the 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  93 

love  of  justice  is  spread  throughout  the  hearts  of  all 
classes,  when  continuous  rebuke  is  maintained  of  all 
that  is  tyrannous  and  oppressive,  when  the  moral 
standards  are  maintained  before  the  eyes  of  the 
people,  and  that  in  terms  of  the  highest  sanctions 
known  to  man,  that  justice  can  be  conceived  of  as 
spreading  throughout  the  whole  range  of  organized 
society.  This  again  is  not  work  that  the  state  can 
do.  Nor  can  it  be  left  to  the  unguided  and  unor- 
ganized forces  of  the  purveyors  of  publicity,  whether 
on  the  platform  or  in  the  press.  Only  one  form  of 
life  can  do  this  thing  for  the  people,  continuously, 
lawfully,  and  that  is  the  community  of  Christ. 

But  in  this  field  the  church  must  rouse  itself  to 
speak  now.  There  are  powers  abroad  in  every  direc- 
tion which  are  fighting  for  the  rights  of  certain  sec- 
tions of  the  industrial  world  in  a  selfish  and  brutal 
spirit.  The  church  must  lift  up  its  voice  calmly  but 
steadily  in  the  name  of  justice.  It  must  rebuke 
every  effort  of  every  class  of  men  to  use  force  for 
the  aggrandizement  of  their  own  material  interests. 
The  suppressed  civil  war  which  characterizes  a  great 
deal  of  the  political  fighting  between  capital  and 
labor  must  give  place  to  the  war  of  fair  and  open 
discussion,  the  foundations  of  righteousness  must  be 
explored  among  the  industrial  and  social  relations 
of  all  classes  of  people.  Ministers  as  such  cannot 
possibly  be  right  judges  at  many  important  points 
of  what  the  best  step  is  which  must  be  taken  at 
any  one  time  to  correct  an  injustice  or  to  rebuke  a 
tyranny.  But  it  is  their  function  wisely,  persis- 
tently, fearlessly  to  exalt  the  ideal  of  fairness,  to 
press  the  everlasting  and  august  principle  of  equal 
justice  towards  all  men.     This  principle  underlies 


94     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

practically  all  the  great  problems  which  we  are  con- 
tinually discussing,  passes  out  of  direct  industrial 
situations  into  other  relations  of  life,  into  the  treat- 
ment of  the  dependent  and  the  defective,  into  the 
treatment  of  women  and  children,  into  the  problem  of 
the  sustenance  of  the  incapacitated  and  of  aged  per- 
sons ;  in  every  direction  the  luminous  Christian  prin- 
ciple of  justice  with  fairness  is  sent,  and  its  light 
made  to  shine  by  the  Christian  church  upon  every 
dark  corner  of  national  life,  upon  every  controversy 
and  struggle. 

There  is  a  third  field  of  action  where  the  two  in- 
stitutions come  into  the  closest  relations  of  all,  and 
in  some  respects  the  most  vital ;  that  is  education. 

With  the  use  of  the  word  education  we  come  upon 
that  point  at  which  the  functions  of  the  State  and 
of  the  Church  respectively  are  of  vital  importance 
to  each  other  and  yet  seem  at  present  to  be  incon- 
sistent with  one  another.  That  the  matter  may  be 
clear,  let  us  very  briefly  state  the  facts  underlying 
the  particular  issue : 

1.  Education  is  becoming  universal  and  compul- 
sory in  every  country  in  the  world.  This  is  a  mod- 
ern and  momentous  feature  of  the  evolution  of  the 
human  race,  one  whose  magnitude  and  all  of  whose 
qualities  we  have  hardly  begun  to  measure  or  to 
understand.  We  are  only  as  yet  experimenting  with 
a  force  whose  range  and  intensity  are  incalculable. 
It  is  not  to  be  wondered  at  that  in  every  direction 
the  question  of  education  is  alive  with  problems. 
The  gravity  of  the  situation  opens  upon  our  minds 
only  as  we  begin  to  grasp  the  range  of  influence 
which  this  universal  and  compulsory  education  must 
exert  upon  the  nature  of  mankind. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  95 

2.  In  the  meantime,  one  of  the  most  notable  fea- 
tures of  the  situation  is  that  ecclesiastical  control  of 
education  has  ahivost  completely  vanished  from  the 
earth.  Few  are  the  countries  where  this  control  is 
tolerated.  The  history  of  this  matter  is  long  and 
intricate.  One  who  knows  it  even  partially  cannot 
wonder  that  the  fear  of  ecclesiastical  control  of  the 
course  of  human  thought  and  of  the  development  of 
science  is  profound  and  justified  by  past  events.  It 
is  perfectly  clear  that  ecclesiastics  as  such  are  no 
more  competent  to  guide  the  development  of  science 
and  philosophy,  and  therefore  no  more  competent  to 
control  the  schools  in  which  these  are  developed  and 
taught,  than  state  officials  as  such  are  competent 
to  preach  the  gospel. 

3.  It  is  a  corollary  of  the  former  position  that 
the  Church  is  determined  that  the  State  shall  not 
control  religious  education.  Here  again  we  come 
upon  the  incompetence  of  a  certain  class  of  officials 
to  conceive  of  and  to  do  justice  to  or  to  direct  oper- 
ations in  another  sphere  than  that  which  is  pri- 
marily their  own.  The  church  must  ever  be  ex- 
tremely jealous  of  any  attempt  on  the  part  of 
secular  institutions,  whose  leaders  own  and  feel  no 
religious  responsibility,  to  take  control  of  any  part 
of  the  work  of  religious  education.  Whether  they 
seek  to  guide  the  instruction  of  little  children  or  to 
train  grown  men  for  the  ministry,  their  interfer- 
ence with  these  fields  of  operation  is  as  dangerous  as 
the  interference  of  ecclesiastics  in  the  work  of  scien- 
tific research. 

4.  The  source  of  all  our  chief  perplexities  is  dis- 
covered in  the  fact  that  the  state  control  of  education 
inevitably  produces  very  powerful  effects  in  the 


96     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

religious  life  of  the  people.  The  state  can  break 
down  religion,  not  because  its  teachers  attack  it,  or 
attempt  to  teach  it,  but  because  they  ignore  it. 
When  the  state  aims  at  logical  thoroughness  in 
avoiding  all  teaching  of  or  about  religion,  it  begins 
to  eliminate  in  its  instruction  of  the  young  whole 
sections  of  history,  whole  vistas  of  reality.  It  is 
bound  to  avoid  when  giving  instruction  in  practical 
morality  all  reference  to  religious  motives,  sanctions, 
or  aims.  When  it  is  inculcating  social  and  patriotic 
ideals  it  is  again  logically  compelled  to  avoid  all 
reference  to  the  Church  as  an  institution  or  to  the 
relation  of  its  ideals  to  those  of  the  nation  as  a 
whole.  When  the  State  seeks  to  carry  this  negative 
attitude  out  thoroughly,  and  the  attempt  has  been 
made  in  several  parts  of  this  country,  it  is  training 
up  a  generation  of  secularists.  The  entire  weight 
of  its  supreme  authority  is  molding  the  child  mind 
and  the  convictions  of  youth  to  believe  that  the 
church  and  its  message  are  unessential  to  the  com- 
plete or  healthy  and  normal  life  of  an  American 
citizen.  No  agitation  of  secularistic  authors,  no 
learned  scepticism  wide-spread  among  academic 
circles,  no  blatant  materialism  out  in  the  active  fields 
of  life,  can  so  completely  undermine  the  spiritual 
life  of  the  country  as  the  completely  secularized 
training  of  the  children  under  the  authority  of  the 
state.  If  and  when  the  weight  of  the  state  in,  say,  a 
university  is  thrown  against  the  Christian  Faith  or 
against  institutions  of  that  faith,  the  state  has  be- 
come the  enemy  of  the  faith,  and  disaster  lies  ahead. 
No  solution  can  be  proposed  in  this  lecture,  for 
the  simple  reason  that  many  solutions  are  being 
tried  and  none  yet  has  gained  the  hearty  approval 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  97 

and  confidence  of  any  large  number  of  earnest 
people.  That  any  hostility  between  State  and 
Church  in  the  field  of  education  must  be  overcome 
is  perfectly  evident.  Modes  of  cooperation  must  be 
found  which  shall  reserve  to  the  State  its  rights, 
to  the  Christian  Church  its  integrity,  and  also  its 
opportunity  of  contributing  the  highest  form  of 
moral  life  to  the  community  which  has  established 
the  State.  Each  of  these  institutions  is  a  servant 
of  the  nation,  and  each  is  necessary  to  the  full  well- 
being  of  the  other.  The  nation  must  see  that  its 
servants  do  not  quarrel,  that  its  household  is  at 
peace,  and  above  all  that  those  whose  functions  are 
most  vital  to  the  life  and  health  of  the  nation  shall 
discover  the  secret  of  complete  and  harmonious  co- 
operation. For  the  sake  of  its  own  life  and  its  most 
sacred  and  vital  work,  the  Church  must  both  honor 
the  State  and  serve  it  in  its  own  way  and  on  its  own 
principles.  The  State,  for  the  sake  of  its  own  great 
functions,  and  in  the  name  of  the  national  life  which 
it  seeks  to  conserve,  must  recognize  that  that  life  is 
not  being  conserved  but  destroyed  if  the  policy  of 
the  State,  as  to  a  wholly  secularized  mode  of  educa- 
tion, does  actually  undermine  the  influence  and  au- 
thority of  the  Church. 

IV.  THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  THE 
NEW  INTERNATIONALISM 

No  greater  result  has  come  from  the  great  war 
than  the  world-consciousness,  as  we  may  call  it, 
which  has  been  awakened  among  the  vast  masses 
of  mankind.  Even  the  private  citizens  of  all  peoples 
that  have  any  civilization  at  all  are  aware  in  a  new 


98     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

way  of  the  life  of  other  peoples  and  their  mutual 
relations.  Hence  a  deep  modification  of  the  national 
consciousness  is  rapidly  developing  before  our  eyes. 
For  one  thing,  people  are  awake  to  the  fact  that 
apart  altogether  from  formal  state  relations,  the 
nations  have  become  very  closely  intertwined  in  the 
main  interests  of  their  life.  Many  institutions  of 
an  international  kind  which  existed  before  the  war 
have  received  access  of  energy  and  in  some  cases 
fresh  illumination  of  their  meaning  and  their  oppor- 
tunity. Even  in  the  midst  of  discussions  about  the 
League  of  Nations  and  the  Treaty  of  Peace  people 
are  aware  that  the  life  of  each  of  the  leading  coun- 
tries is  intimately  bound  up  with  the  life  of  the 
others.  In  the  fields  of  industry  and  commerce,  of 
intellectual  and  artistic  pursuits,  this  inner  connec- 
tion of  nation  with  nation  is  being  broadened  and 
deepened.  The  effort,  therefore,  to  establish  a 
League  of  Nations  through  governmental  action  is 
simply  the  effort  to  establish  the  means  by  which  an 
international  life  can  be  regulated  and  made  more 
effective  which  is  already  widely  realized.  That  the 
League  of  Nations  so  gloriously  established  has  yet 
stormy  days  before  it  may  go  without  saying.  But 
it  cannot  be  destroyed,  and  the  gradual  improvement 
of  its  constitution  and  the  progressive  effectiveness 
of  its  operation  must  be  assumed.  Increasingly  this 
marvelous  association  of  the  governments  of  the 
world  will  illuminate  and  confirm  all  the  other  modes 
of  interaction  between  nation  and  nation.  The 
operation  of  the  League  of  Nations  will  bring  them 
into  clearer  light,  and  will  help  to  keep  them  before 
the  eyes  of  all  citizens  publicly,  constantly  and 
extensively. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  99 

The  unity  of  the  race  is  not  a  matter  of  mere 
animal  inheritance.  It  is  much  more  than  the  dis- 
covery that  the  nations  are  commercially  interde- 
pendent because  they  possess  interchangeable  com- 
modities. The  unity  of  the  race  is  an  achievement 
of  the  spirit,  it  is  a  revelation  in  history  of  the  iden- 
tical moral  and  spiritual  nature  of  all  mankind.  It 
implies  the  consciousness  of  a  common  destiny 
toward  which  all  the  races  move  for  the  fulfilment 
of  the  purposes  of  God. 

Now  the  League  of  Nations  is  the  greatest  step 
yet  taken  by  the  world  as  a  whole  towards  the  attain- 
ment of  that  unity.  Its  birth  it  is  our  happiness  to 
see.  It  is  the  supreme  glory  of  our  day  to  have 
brought  it  forth. 

Behind  this  most  wonderful  hour  of  history  there 
lie  eighteen  centuries  of  the  history  of  the  Christian 
Faith.  We  have  already  seen  that  from  its  begin- 
ning the  community  created  by  that  faith  recognized 
itself  and  was  recognized  as  international  and  inter- 
racial. Throughout  those  centuries  it  has  been 
working,  often  in  darkness  and  confusion,  toward 
the  great  end  which  begins  to  take  shape  before  our 
eyes.  It  has  always  carried  in  its  heart  a  message 
to  the  whole  world,  it  has  always  maintained  that 
the  same  principles  must  govern  the  conduct  of  all 
peoples  both  in  private  and  in  public  relations.  It 
has  always  been  the  foe  of  divided  standards  of 
morality.  It  has  always,  even  though  at  times 
feebly  and  confusedly,  maintained  the  ideal  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man.  Wherever  it  has  gone  it  has 
delivered  alike  to  ancient  civilizations  and  to  the 
most  backward  peoples  its  divine  and  august  mes- 
sages of  righteousness  and  peace;  and  here  in  the 


100     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

history  and  in  the  formal  proceedings  which  have 
produced  the  Covenant  of  the  League  of  Nations 
two  great  principles  leap  to  the  light  as  above  all 
others  vital  and  important  for  the  world  today.  The 
first  of  these  is  that  righteousness  or  justice  must 
characterize  the  dealings  of  governments  with  one 
another  as  the  dealings  of  individuals  with  one 
another.  No  longer  will  the  world  tolerate  that 
governments  should  be  held  guiltless  if  they  lie 
and  murder  and  steal,  even  in  the  name  of  their 
country's  honor  or  for  the  advancement  of  its  com- 
merce or  territory.  The  second  of  these  is  that  the 
strong  governments  and  the  great  nations  shall  be 
responsible  for  the  safety  and  the  progress  of  the 
least  and  most  backward  peoples  on  the  face  of  the 
earth.  It  is  with  the  determination  to  see  that  these 
two  great  principles  shall  be  recognized  and  unani- 
mously adopted  by  the  whole  world  that  the  League 
of  Nations  has  been  created.  The  former  principle 
is  embodied  in  the  combination  of  the  powers  to 
prevent  war,  and  the  second  is  developed  in  the  doc- 
trine of  mandates,  according  to  which  any  regions 
of  the  world  henceforth  placed  under  the  control  of 
a  civilized  government  shall  be  recognized  as  so 
placed  in  order  that  the  rights  of  the  weak  may  be 
held  sacred  and  their  progress  in  civilization  may 
be  advanced.  And  both  these  acts  of  transcendent 
importance  in  the  history  of  the  state  are  manifest 
products  of  the  Christian  Faith. 

Students  of  the  spread  of  Christianity  in  modern 
times  have  long  been  aware  of  the  powerful  manner 
in  which  the  process  of  evangelizing  the  world  has 
acted  upon  the  life  and  character  of  the  mission 
fields.    They  are  aware  also  that  for  many  years  the 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  101 

great  missionary  boards  have  been  confronted  with 
many  problems  arising  through  relations  to  the  gov- 
ernments of  the  world.  These  matters  have  not 
been  spread  broadcast  in  the  newspapers,  they  have 
not  been  discussed  on  platforms  and  very  little  even 
in  the  pulpit ;  but  they  are  part  of  the  records  of  all 
missionary  boards  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  If  their 
story  were  related  it  would  illustrate  in  a  striking 
way  the  relation  of  the  Christian  Faith  to  the  re- 
sponsibilities and  tasks  of  the  state.  As  part  of  the 
aftermath  of  the  great  war,  the  chief  missionary 
boards  of  the  world  are  now  confronted  with  a 
situation  which  is  not  only  unparalleled  but  full  of 
new  situations  which  they  have  to  face,  and  most 
anxious  practical  problems  which  they  have  to  solve. 
Around  the  world  they  are  now  in  contact  with  all 
governments.  They  are  engaged  in  negotiations  of 
the  most  important  kind  which  will  affect  the  policy 
of  those  governments  and  the  future  history  of  the 
Christian  Faith  in  the  lands  which  they  control. 

A  recent  conference  of  representatives  from  the 
whole  Protestant  world  met  in  Geneva,  and  I  take 
as  illustrating  the  subject  of  the  present  lecture  the 
following  paragraph  from  an  account  of  that  con- 
ference :  ® 

In  facing  the  new  situation  missions  have  need  to  take 
counsel  together  how  in  the  changing  conditions  they  may 
secure  the  freedom  of  opportunity  which  is  a  vital  interest 
of  their  work,  and  how  they  may  successfully  urge  upon 
governments  their  reasonable  claims.  In  doing  this  it  is 
necessary  for  them  to  try  to  understand  the  standpoints  of 
governments.  They  cannot,  if  they  are  to  succeed,  shut  their 
eyes  to  the  existence  in  the  world  of  political  and  economic 

9  International  Review  of  Missions,"  Oct.,  1920,  p.  486. 


102     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

rivalries,  and  the  suspicions  and  fears  which  these  engender. 
Nor  can  they  be  indjfferent  to  the  disintegrating  effect  of 
Christian  teaching,  as  of  Western  civilization  generally,  on 
existing  social  fabrics,  and  the  natural  concern  of  govern- 
ments in  regard  to  these  effects.  They  must  aim  also  at  a 
sympathetic  understanding  of  the  constructive  tasks  of  gov- 
ernment with  a  view  to  cooperating  in  these  tasks  as  far  as 
may  be  consistent  with  their  own  proper  and  distinctive 
aims. 

There  we  have  set  before  us  with  the  vividness 
of  living  action  the  depth  and  power  of  the  Christian 
Faith,  the  penetrating  influence  of  its  divine  prin- 
ciples upon  the  plastic  nature  and  life  of  human 
institutions,  even  upon  the  greatest  of  them  all,  the 
state.  Unless  humanity  goes  mad,  unless  the  great 
states  deliberately  cultivate  moral  blindness  and 
pursue  a  policy  which  creates  war  and  successive 
great  wars,  that  will  obliterate  civilization,  through 
the  instruments  of  civilization,  if  on  the  contrary 
righteous  relations  can  be  maintained  among  the 
governments  of  the  world,  a  universal  peace  may 
be  secured  and  the  hideous  and  inhuman  specter  of 
war  may  be  banished  forever  from  our  world. 

But  so  far  as  we  can  see  no  condition  like  that  can 
be  secured,  no  harmony  of  the  world  maintained, 
except  by  the  power  of  the  Christian  Faith.  In  that 
faith  the  mind  of  God  speaks  to  man  as  nowhere 
else,  to  the  depths  of  his  soul,  summoning  and 
guiding  him  to  the  heights  of  his  destiny.  Through 
that  faith  the  Creative  Word  by  which  our  nature 
was  fashioned  has  become  the  redeeming  Word 
carrying  our  nature  to  its  consummation. 

When  the  state  fulfils  the  highest  ideals  of  its 
citizens  it  will  breathe  the  spirit  of  that  faith. 
When  that  faith  is  utterly  obeyed  by  the  children 


The  Christian  Faith  and  the  State  103 

of  God  the  citizens  will  rejoice  in  its  light,  submit 
to  its  divine  authority.  And  then  the  state  will  be 
worthy  of  the  apostolic  description :  ''  Every  sub-S 
ject  must  obey  the  government  authorities,  for  no  v; 
authority  exists  apart  from  God;  the  existing  au- 
thorities have  been  constituted  by  God.  The  magis- 
trate is  God's  servant  for  your  benefit.  Magistrates 
are  God's  officers  bent  upon  the  maintenance  of  order 
and  authority.  Pay  them  all  their  respective  dues  " ; 
and  over  all  discussion  of  the  subject  rises  the 
august  and  far-shining  word  of  our  Lord,  "  Render 
unto  Caesar  the  things  that  are  Caesar's,  and  unto 
God  the  things  that  are  God's." 


IV 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  INDUSTRY 

By  Hon.  Roger  W.  Babson 

President  of  Babson's  Statistical  Organization 


H 


THE  CHRISTIAN  FAITH  AND  INDUSTRY 


MR.  PRESIDENT,  members  of  the  graduating 
class,  and  friends :  Let  me  say  what  a  splendid 
thing  I  think  this  Foundation  is  and  what  foresight 
Mrs.  Greene  and  her  sons  showed.  Mr.  Greene,  as 
most  of  you  know,  was  the  ruling  spirit  of  one  of  the 
largest  mill  construction  concerns  in  America,  and 
I  almost  feel  that  this  would  be  the  one  subject  of 
the  course  in  which  he  would  be  most  interested. 
On  the  other  hand,  like  the  father  of  a  large  family 
of  children,  it  would  probably  be  the  one  lecture  of 
the  course  which  he  would  refuse  to  give  himself, 
because  industrial  relations,  like  the  bringing  up  of 
children,  is  a  subject  that  most  of  us  who  have  had 
experience  in  hesitate  greatly  to  speak  upon.  I 
would  not  feel  justified  in  speaking  to  many  audi- 
ences today  on  this  subject;  but  I  feel  that  you  are 
entitled  to  what  little  experience  I  have  had  along 
these  lines.  Certainly,  as  you  go  forth  into  the 
world,  this  will  be  the  great  problem  that  you  will 
be  compelled  to  face. 

I  speak  from  experience,  first,  with  a  group  of 
three  hundred  which  I  have  at  Wellesley ;  second,  as 
vice-president  of  a  power  company  which  supplies 
all  the  electricity  to  Albany,  Schenectady,  Troy,  and 
Eastern  New  York,  where  we  employ  some  two  thou- 
sand mechanics  and  high-grade  wage-workers;  and 
third,  in  connection  with  experience  which  I  have 
had   as   Chairman   of   the   Board   of   Directors  of 


108     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

the  Eastern  Massachusetts  Street  Railway  Com- 
pany, employing  about  two  thousand  motormen  and 
conductors,  and  various  laborers. 

Experience,  they  say,  is  a  dear  teacher,  but  sta- 
tistics would  show  that  it  supplies  about  ninety-five 
per  cent,  of  the  teaching.  That  especially  applies 
to  labor  problems.  Why  is  there  such  feeling  be- 
tween the  employer  and  the  wage-worker?  I  think 
that  can  be  answered  very  concretely  as  follows: 
The  wage-worker  feels  that  the  employer  is  opposed 
to  collective  bargaining  and  the  union,  simply  on 
material  grounds.  The  wage-worker  is  trained  to 
believe  that  unions  increase  wages  and  that  in- 
creased wages  reduce  profits,  and  that  consequently 
the  employer  is  opposed  to  labor-unions.  The  em- 
ployer, on  the  other  hand,  is  just  as  conscientious  in 
believing  that  labor-unions  derive  their  strength 
from  the  force  which  they  have  in  collective  bargain- 
ing, and  that  their  employment  of  the  strike,  use 
of  the  union  and  collective  bargaining,  are  simply 
the  use  of  force.  Both  sides  uphold  their  position 
for  and  against  the  union  on  moral,  if  not  religious, 
grounds.  Just  as  in  the  old  days  the  defenders  and 
opponents  of  slavery  defended  their  position  on 
ethical  grounds,  so  both  the  employer  and  the  wage- 
worker,  both  the  defender  and  the  opponent  of  the 
union,  defend  their  position. 

What  does  labor  want?  First,  labor  wants  a 
living  wage,  and  most  wage-workers  want  a  money 
wage.  It  seems  to  me  that  there  is  one  thing  which 
you  men,  as  you  go  out,  want  to  understand  clearly, 
and  that  is  the  difference  between  a  money  wage 
and  a  real  wage.  The  real  wage  is  the  purchasing 
power  of  the  week's  earnings  turned  into  groceries, 


Mi; 

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■-^. 'T  .|r"" 

T 

fc-''^ 

■'  *     '      '    -■■  <  ■, 

'  "       ,      '  V,      *■■■''      'i      ,,-  . 

i 

HP^'-~i 

1 

WUr:-!. 

9^M 

1^^^ 

M 

1 

^^^t^^t0 

Kl^%ivi 

"•»ll«^-«t:K'^"' 

'•    ~*  . 

'^^H^^H^^ 

^ 

V.    :%' 

The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  109 

clothing,  furniture,  rent.  The  money  wage  is  the 
amount  that  is  in  the  pay-envelope.  To  speak  very 
concretely,  today  the  money  wage  is  practically 
double  what  it  was  ten  years  ago;  today  the  real 
wage  is  only  fifteen  per  cent,  greater  than  it  was 
ten  years  ago.  All  wage-workers  want  more  money, 
just  as  intelligent  preachers  want  more  money,  and 
they  are  both  justified  in  their  position.  But  very 
few  wage-workers  realize  the  difference  between 
real  wages  in  terms  of  commodities  and  money 
wages  in  terms  of  dollars.  Some  say  that  labor 
wants  control  of  industry;  some  of  you  graduates 
and  students  I  have  heard  say  that.  In  my  experi- 
ence, both  in  connection  with  these  personal  cor- 
porations and  during  the  war,  when  I  was  in  Wash- 
ington as  a  helper  to  the  Secretary  of  Labor,  I  have 
seen  very  little  evidence  that  labor  desires  control 
of  industry.  Labor  wants  to  be  consulted  in  de- 
termining conditions  of  work,  questions  of  ventila- 
tion, location  of  toilets,  hours  for  lunch — yes,  hours 
of  work.  Labor  does  not  want  control,  and  I  very 
seriously  question  if  labor  wants  representation  on 
the  board  of  trustees.  Labor  dreads  responsibility, 
just  as  you  and  I  dread  the  responsibility  of  taking 
out  the  appendix  of  our  daughter.  Labor  does  not 
want  a  soft  snap.  If  you  have  any  doubt  of  that, 
note  the  lethargy  and  indifference  of  the  man  who 
stands  at  the  bench  until  the  whistle  blows  twelve, 
when  he  jumps  out,  eats  a  hurried  lunch,  and  goes 
out  in  the  hot  sun  and  plays  ball  until  one  minute 
of  one.  Labor  does  not  object  to  work;  none  of  us 
object  to  work,  provided  it  is  work  in  which  we 
are  interested.  No,  labor  is  not  looking  for  a  soft 
snap.      Labor    is    not    looking    for    profit-sharing, 


110     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

bonuses,  baseball  teams,  bathtubs,  pianos,  or  mov- 
ing-picture theaters  in  connection  with  their  plants. 
I  remember  hearing,  at  a  convention  of  the  Amer- 
ican Federation  of  Labor,  a  prominent  representa- 
tive of  a  great  company  tell  of  the  pianos  he  had — 
one  located  on  each  floor.  After  he  got  through 
talking,  a  chap  from  Brockton  got  up  (one  of  the 
labor  leaders)  and  said,  "  I  want  to  say  that  out 
in  Brockton  we  don't  have  '  pi-anners '  on  each 
floor  of  the  factory,  but  we  do  have  *  pi-anners '  in 
each  home.''  Now  that  is  the  philosophy  of  the  wage- 
worker.  Welfare  work,  profit-sharing,  bonuses,  and 
those  things  are  useful  as  long  as  they  increase  the 
efficiency  of  the.  worker.  They  are  useful  as  long 
as  they  make  money  for  the  employer,  and  thus 
indirectly  for  the  wage-worker;  but  to  the  extent 
that  they  are  used  for  scenery,  and  to  the  extent 
that  they  are  used  in  the  average  plant,  simply  as 
an  attraction  to  get  in  labor  when  labor  is  scarce, 
they  are  harmful.  But  all  these  costs  are  passed 
on  to  the  consumer.  It  makes  little  difference  to 
the  employer  whether  he  has  profit-sharing,  or 
bonuses,  or  bathrooms,  or  "  pi-anners,"  the  con- 
sumer pays  the  bill.  In  Wellesley  this  last  Christmas 
I  distributed  one  hundred  and  twenty  thousand  dol- 
lars among  my  employees.  Did  this  come  out  of 
my  pocket?  No,  it  came  out  of  the  pockets  of  my 
clients.  The  same  thing  is  true  all  down  through 
the  line.  Increased  wages?  Why  does  every  em- 
ployer object  to  increased  wages?  Simply  because 
he  feels  that  it  handicaps  him  in  the  competitive 
game  of  business.  That's  all.  The  increase  does  not 
come  out  of  his  pocket;  it  is  simply  added  to  the 
price  of  the  goods  and  passed  on  to  the  consumer. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  111 

One  of  the  saddest  things  about  the  labor  move- 
ment (and  I  beheve  in  labor  unions  and  in  collective 
bargaining)  is  that  the  wage-worker  thinks  his  real 
wages  are  increased  by  the  union.  They  are  not. 
A  strike  simply  brings  about  a  forced  loan.  It  forces 
the  employer  to  advance  wages  before  the  law  of 
supply  and  demand  would  advance  them.  But  just 
as  soon  as  the  trade  becomes  adjusted  to  the  advance 
in  wages,  it  is  passed  on  to  the  consumer.  In  the 
case  of  builders,  that  is,  those  who  employ  carpen- 
ters, plumbers,  and  masons,  they  are  much  more  for- 
tunate than  some  others  of  us  poor  manufacturers, 
because  the  higher  the  wage  the  higher  their  com- 
mission. 

We  also  must  remember  that  labor  is  in  the  adoles- 
cent period.  The  labor  movement  is  a  new  move- 
ment, in  a  sense.  Of  course  there  always  has  been, 
since  the  days  of  Cain  and  Abel,  a  struggle  between 
the  man  who  has  and  the  man  who  has  not,  and 
there  always  will  be.  During  the  war  I  was  asked 
to  speak  in  Washington  on  the  labor  question,  and 
I  ran  into  the  office  of  the  Secretary  of  Labor  and 
said :  "  I  am  going  to  speak  this  afternoon  to  a  con- 
vention here,  on  the  labor  problem.  Have  you  any 
suggestions?"  He  scratched  his  head.  He  is  a  very 
careful  man — always  thinks  through  an  entire  sen- 
tence, including  the  period,  before  he  utters  the  first 
word.  He  replied,  "  Why,  Mr.  Babson,  I  have  only 
one  suggestion,  namely,  tell  them  that  one  hundred 
years  from  today  some  one  will  be  speaking  on  the 
same  spot  and  on  the  same  subject." 

Labor  is  in  the  adolescent  period ;  the  same  period 
industrially  as  you  were  in  when  you  were  fourteen 
years  of  age.    Now  you  couldn't  be  told  very  much — 


112     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

not  very  much,  and  yet  you  were  as  serious  if  not 
more  serious  than  you  are  today.  It  is  the  same 
with  the  labor  movement.  They  are  just  feeling 
the  pangs  of  growth.  They  are  feehng  the  joys  of 
self-expression.  They  are  "  feeling  their  oats,"  to 
speak  technically.  Now  that  is  all  in  the  line  of 
nature,  in  the  line  of  development,  and  you  might 
as  well  try  to  tie  a  string  around  a  budding  apple 
tree  as  to  crush  labor  in  this  movement.  You  might 
as  well  try  to  destroy  a  ball  of  mercury  by  hitting  it 
with  a  hammer,  as  to  try  to  crush  labor  in  this  move- 
ment. As  an  employer  of  labor  I  should  not  want 
to  live  in  a  country  where  labor  was  not  struggling 
for  better  conditions  and  was  not  filled  with  this 
divine  sense  and  desire  for  freedom,  growth,  and 
better  living. 

Labor  craves  sympathy.  Labor  feels  that  it  must 
suffer  much  more  than  the  employer  suffers  in  the 
struggle.  Now  that  is  a  very  important  point — a 
very  important  point.  I  am  pretty  sure  that  in  most 
instances  the  economics,  and  possibly  justice,  are  on 
the  side  of  the  employer ;  but  here  is  the  difficulty : 
the  employer  has  a  certain  advantage  which  gives 
him  a  great  responsibility.  Let  me  illustrate :  You 
all  represent  a  union  and  I  am  an  employer,  and 
we  get  into  a  difficulty  and  you  quit  work.  I  close 
down  the  mill,  and  you  refuse  to  work  for  me  until 
the  thing  is  settled.  There  is  one  thing  that  is  con- 
stantly staring  you  in  the  eyes  all  the  time,  namely, 
that  if  I  never  open  my  mill  again  I  can  still  run 
my  limousine,  my  daughter  still  attend  school  and 
college,  and  my  wife  have  all  the  luxuries  of  the 
land,  by  just  cutting  off  coupons.  But  you,  who 
have  only  a  few  hundred  dollars  in  the  bank,  are  not 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  113 

in  that  position,  so  you  have  this  subconscious  feel- 
ing all  the  time,  that  the  cards  are  marked  and 
stacked  against  you,  and  if  the  question  becomes  one 
of  plain,  sheer  endurance  you  must  eventually  give 
in.  Now  that  may  be  the  law  of  the  land,  but  it  is 
not  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of  God. 

Labor  hungers  for  self-expression.  Some  of  us, 
once  upon  a  time,  were  in  love.  We  found  a  girl 
who  very  much  appealed  to  us.  Our  mothers  didn't 
see  great  ability  in  her,  our  sisters  didn't  see  much 
beauty  in  her,  and  our  friends  "  joshed  "  us  about  it, 
and  yet  we  were  crazy  about  her — crazij  about  her. 
What  was  the  reason?  I  will  give  you  the  opinion 
of  a  statistician  as  to  the  reason.  She  was  the  first 
person  in  the  world  that  we  felt  ever  understood  us 
and  appreciated  us.  She  thought  we  were  the  real 
thing,  and  she  seemed  either  to  put  into  action  or  to 
put  into  words  and  personify  those  things  that  we 
had  been  hoping  and  craving  for  many  years. 

Now  this  is  the  explanation  of  the  influence  of 
the  labor-union  leader  today.  The  wage-worker  has 
been  going  to  his  mill  at  seven  in  the  morning,  work- 
ing until  noon,  eating  a  cold,  hurried  lunch,  going 
back  to  his  work  in  the  afternoon,  and  going  home 
at  night  to  find  the  babies  asleep.  And  for  once, 
here  is  the  first  man  who,  out  of  millions  and  mil- 
lions, has  understood  his  trouble,  has  pleaded  his 
cause,  who  has  been  able  to  get  up  on  a  soap-box 
and  say  what  he  has  been  thinking  all  his  life.  He 
hungers  for  self-expression  and  the  labor  leader  has 
given  him  that  self-expression.  The  labor  leader 
has  provided  that  function  which  he  has  been  hun- 
gering for,  and  that  accounts  for  the  labor  leader's 
influence  today.    Hence  the  most  serious  question  in 


114     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

connection  with  the  entire  industrial  problem  is  the 
character  of  the  labor  leader.  You  cannot  eliminate 
labor  leaders  any  more  than  you  can  eliminate  love, 
but  you  can  steer  your  boy  to  a  girl  who  is  some 
good.  That  is  your  problem,  to  steer  your  wage- 
workers — the  wage-workers  in  your  communities — 
to  following  men  who  are  some  good.  Following 
leaders  is  simply  in  accordance  with  the  laws  of 
nature.  It  is  just  as  reasonable  for  a  certain  few 
people  to  become  leaders  and  the  great  mass  to  be- 
come followers  as  it  is  for  water  to  run  down-hill 
or  for  the  laws  of  gravitation  to  work;  and  to  buck 
these  psychological  laws  is  just  as  foolish  as  to  buck 
the  physical  laws.  The  thing  to  do,  instead  of  try- 
ing to  dam  the  stream  to  run  the  water-wheel  the 
wrong  way,  is  to  install  the  water-wheel  so  that  the 
power  of  the  stream  can  be  used  to  grind  corn. 
Hence  instead  of  trying  to  crush  unions  and  elimi- 
nate labor  leaders,  the  thing  to  do  is  to  get  Christian 
labor  leaders.    That  is  the  solution  of  the  problem. 

Labor  has  an  inborn  desire  for  freedom.  Labor, 
like  the  growing  boy,  unless  very  wisely  and  intelli- 
gently directed,  will  sow  its  wild  oats,  and  it  can- 
not be  stopped.  The  child  is  just  learning  to  walk 
and  he  does  the  most  foolish  things.  He  tumbles 
down  and  gets  up,  and  tumbles  down  and  gets  up, 
and  you  are  lucky  if  he  doesn't  tumble  down-stairs. 
But  is  that  any  reason  for  tying  his  legs  or  locking 
him  in  the  cradle?  No,  that  is  the  only  way  he 
learns.  It  is  the  same  with  labor.  Of  course  labor 
makes  mistakes,  the  same  as  every  child  makes  mis- 
takes learning  to  walk,  every  boy  makes  mistakes 
learning  to  play,  and  we  all  make  mistakes  through- 
out life.    The  only  man  who  doesn't  make  mistakes 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  115 

is  a  dead  man — the  only  man  who  makes  no  mistakes 
makes  nothing  but  trouble. 

Now  so  much  for  the  difficulties  of  the  problem. 
A  few  words  regarding  the  outlook  for  the  future: 
Please  let  me  say  that  the  problem  will  never  be 
solved  by  legislation,  or  agreements  between  wage- 
workers  and  employers,  or  by  enforced  arbitration — 
never — never.  This  plan  that  Governor  Allen  is 
talking  about,  in  Kansas,  is  all  right  to  get  elected 
governor  on,  but  it  will  never  solve  the  problem  of 
human  nature.  And  what  is  that  problem?  That 
problem  is — creating  the  right  feeling;  and  you 
cannot  create  a  proper  feeling  through  legislation, 
or  through  votes  of  boards  of  directors,  or  through 
compulsory  arbitration,  or  through  mechanical 
means  of  any  kind. 

By  nature  man  likes  to  produce.  If  we  went  to 
any  factory  where  the  men  were  loafing  on  the  job, 
and  could  drop  back  to  the  childhood  days  of  those 
boys  and  girls,  would  we  find  them  loafing  on  the 
job?  No,  we  would  find  them  out  making  mud-pies, 
all  by  themselves.  The  boy  somehow  or  other  gets 
hold  of  a  knife,  and  with  that  knife,  all  by  himself, 
he  whittles  a  boat.  The  girl  gets  hold  of  a  pair  of 
scissors  and  a  piece  of  cloth  and,  all  by  herself,  starts 
to  make  a  dress  for  her  doll.  By  nature  man  likes  to 
produce.  When  the  boy  gets  a  little  older  he  makes 
a  hut,  makes  a  sled.  He  is  continually  trying  to 
create  things.  By  nature  man  likes  to  produce  until 
he  gets  into  a  factory,  and  there  is  something  about 
the  industrial  system  which  tends  to  castrate  him 
economically  and  to  kill  that  joy  in  production, 
which  had  been  a  feature  of  his  boyhood  days. 
Now  there  is  your  difficulty  in  the  labor  problem,  and 


116     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

your  solution  of  the  labor  problem  lies  in  recreating 
that  man  and  getting  back  that  joy  in  production 
and  that  desire  to  produce. 

We  must  give  labor  more  information.  The  aver- 
age employer  is  taught  economics  at  school  and  col- 
lege. The  average  labor  leader  has  never  been  given 
a  course  in  economics.  I  wish  some  one  would  give 
ten  thousand  dollars  to  found  a  course  of  lectures 
before  the  Central  Labor  Union  here  in  Boston.  I 
think  they  would  accept  it  and  appreciate  it.  But 
the  colleges  and  the  churches,  and  all  the  other  good 
institutions,  are  devoting  their  energy  to  informing 
the  employer,  when  the  wage-worker  honestly  be- 
lieves that  water  can  be  made  to  run  up-hill  by  pass- 
ing a  vote  of  the  Massachusetts  Legislature.  He 
honestly  believes  it.  And  would  not  we  believe  it  if 
we  had  not  been  told  something  different?  A  lot  of 
things  we  believe  now  are  not  true,  and  our  children 
will  laugh  at  us  for  our  belief  in  those  things.  It  is 
just  as  reasonable  to  these  fellows  to  believe  that 
water  can  run  up-hill,  provided  the  Massachusetts 
Legislature  votes  the  same  and  the  bill  is  signed  by 
the  governor. 

The  wage-worker  must  be  told  frankly  by  you 
preachers  that,  speaking  scientifically,  he  is  simply 
a  factory  where  they  put  groceries  in  one  end  and 
take  manufactured  goods  out  of  the  other  end. 
Scientifically  he  is  a  factory;  in  one  end  you  put 
groceries,  as  you  put  meat  into  a  meat-chopper,  and 
you  turn  out  clothing,  houses,  bridges,  railroads 
from  the  other  end.  Hence  if  the  cost  of  groceries 
goes  up  the  cost  of  labor  must  go  up,  and  in  order 
to  get  the  cost  of  groceries  down  the  cost  of  labor 
must  come  down.    I  think  all  of  us  want  the  law  of 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  117 

supply  and  demand  to  apply  to  everybody's  finances 
except  our  own,  but  I  am  sure  that  both  employers 
and  wage-workers  want  to  suspend  the  working  of 
the  law  in  connection  with  this  industrial  problem. 
We  must  teach  both  sides  the  fundamental  truths; 
we  must  give  both  sides  the  facts. 

Publicity  is,  I  think,  the  cure  for  most  of  our  evils 
— international,  national,  social,  industrial,  and 
financial.  We  must  have  more  publicity.  Over  in 
our  organization  at  Wellesley  our  pay-roll  is  public ; 
anybody  can  go  to  the  ofhce  and  find  out  what  pay 
anybody  else  is  getting.  Our  number  of  clients  is 
published;  our  earnings  are  published;  our  profits 
are  published  on  a  bulletin-board  each  w^eek  for  our 
employees  to  see.  We  feel  very  strongly  that  pub- 
licity develops  an  atmosphere  of  confidence,  which 
is  the  one  solution  to  the  problem — confidence — con- 
fidence. When  the  wage-worker  has  confidence  in 
the  employer,  and  the  employer  has  confidence  in 
the  labor  leader,  a  strike  is  impossible,  and  efficiency 
will  gradually  increase  to  the  maximum. 

Are  labor-unions  inevitable?  Yes.  But  their  real 
function  should  be  the  function  of  the  fire  depart- 
ment. The  most  efficient  fire  department  is  the  fire 
department  which  never  goes  to  a  fire.  That  is  true. 
If  in  looking  up  the  figures  in  Newton  I  found  that 
the  fire  department  was  out  most  of  the  time,  I 
should  say  that  was  a  pretty  poor  fire  chief  and  a 
very  poor  city  government.  The  way  to  handle  fires 
is  in  connection  with  inspection,  installation  of 
sprinkler  systems,  building  fire-proof  buildings,  and 
the  proper  location  of  combustibles,  and  so  on  down 
the  line.  The  real  duty  of  the  fire  chief  is  to  see 
that  there  are  no  fires  in  Newton;  not  to  be  going 


118     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

around  from  one  house  to  another  squirting  water 
on  property. 

Labor-unions  have  come  to  stay  and  labor  leaders 
have  come  to  stay.  The  first  step  is  to  select 
Christian  labor  leaders;  the  second  step  is  to  give 
facts  publicity;  the  third  step  is  for  these  labor- 
unions  to  use  preventive  work,  and  for  employers 
to  keep  conditions  such  that  there  will  not  be  these 
strikes.  Possible?  Entirely  possible.  Somebody 
says,  "  The  more  labor-unions,  the  more  strikes." 
That  may  be  pretty  nearly  true,  too,  but  you  might 
just  as  well  say,  "  The  more  boards  of  health,  the 
more  sickness."  One  is  as  logical  as  the  other.  It 
is  because  we  employers  encourage  the  boards  of 
health  and  we  seek  to  have  good  men  in  control  of 
the  boards  of  health,  while  we  push  the  labor-union 
aside  and  spurn  the  labor  leader. 

How  are  men  controlled  ?  Here  is  a  suggestion : 
A  child  one  year  old  is  actuated  ninety-nine  per 
cent,  by  instinct,  nothing  by  religion,  and  one  per 
cent,  by  intellect.  A  child  five  years  old  is  actuated 
ninety  per  cent,  by  instinct,  seven  per  cent,  by  re- 
ligion, and  three  per  cent,  by  intellect.  A  boy  four- 
teen years  old  (when  the  average  chap  goes  to  work) 
is  actuated  seventy-five  per  cent,  by  instinct,  twenty 
per  cent,  by  religion,  and  five  per  cent,  by  intellect. 
The  average  man  thirty  years  old — the  average  man 
who  was  enlisted  and  drafted  into  the  United  States 
Army — showed  this  test:  Sixty  per  cent,  instinct, 
thirty  per  cent,  religion  and  environment,  and  ten 
per  cent,  intellect.  In  talking  that  over  with  some 
of  the  men  who  were  handling  the  tests,  they  said, 
"  Well,  that  is  nothing  to  be  excited  about,  Babson, 
you  possibly  couldn't  show  yourself  more  than  eleven 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  119 

or  twelve."  What  does  that  mean  in  connection 
with  the  industrial  problem  ?  It  means  that  all  this 
is  a  problem  of  feelings.  Ah,  friends,  the  world  is 
not  ruled  by  statistics,  but  by  feelings ;  and  it  makes 
no  difference  what  a  man  agrees  to,  or  whether  he 
is  an  employer  or  a  wage-worker;  unless  he  feels 
right  afterward  toward  the  other  party,  nothing  has 
been  accomplished.  One  of  the  saddest  things  I 
saw  down  in  Washington  was  the  great  number  of 
strikes  that  were  settled  technically,  but  with  the 
people  interested  going  away  feeling  sore.  Ah,  I 
had  rather  have  one  strike  settled  where  both  parties 
feel  right,  than  have  a  dozen  settled  through  compul- 
sory arbitration. 

Of  course,  that  brings  us  to  the  difficulty  that  is 
imminent  with  large  organizations.  Why  do  we 
hear  so  much  about  the  labor  troubles  of  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation?  Simply  because  it  is  the 
largest  steel  corporation,  and  it  is  inevitable.  If  our 
good  friends  of  the  Federal  Council  of  Churches, 
men  whom  I  admire  and  respect,  had  the  United 
States  Steel  Corporation  to  run,  and  kept  it  just  as 
large  as  it  is  today,  they  would  have  just  as  much 
labor  trouble  as  Mr.  Gary  has.  Bill  Jones'  steel 
plant  has  no  trouble.  Why !  Because  Bill  Jones  can 
call  every  one  of  those  fellows  by  their  first  names ; 
but  when  Bill  dies,  and  the  plant  goes  to  his  daugh- 
ter, who  gets  married  and  goes  to  Europe  to  live, 
then  the  managers  here  in  New  England  forget  the 
first  names  of  those  men,  and  numbers  are  put  on 
them,  and  they  are  known  by  numbers.  The  plant 
continues  to  grow  and  make  money,  but  that  per- 
sonal touch  becomes  more  and  more  distant.  Then 
you  take  up  a  paper  some  morning  and  find  that  this 


120     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

company  has  a  great  labor  trouble.  It  is  due  to  ab- 
sentee ownership;  the  fact  that  the  new  owners  do 
not  like  to  live  in  that  mill  town  with  those  people. 
They  want  to  live  in  a  cultivated  community.  It  is 
as  true  as  that  two  and  two  make  four — that  labor 
troubles  are  inevitable ;  and  we  have  got  to  get  back 
to  smaller  organizations  and  the  personal  touch,  and 
eliminate  absentee  ownership.  Henry  Ford  sent  me 
one  Christmas  his  photograph,  and  under  it  are  these 
words,  "  Eliminate  absentee  ownership,  and  the 
wage  problem  solves  itself."  It  is  awful  hard  to 
have  a  row  with  a  fellow  you  call  "  Bill  "  every  day. 
Just  let  me  read  something  from  a  letter  which  I 
sent  to  my  clients,  on  the  labor  problem : 

The  question  of  closed  shop  or  open  shop  is  like  that  of 
high  prices  and  low  prices.  We  all  naturally  favor  fair 
prices,  neither  high  nor  low,  but  what  we  favor  has  nothing 
to  do  with  the  price.  The  price  of  goods,  wages,  and  every- 
thing else  is  determined  by  supply  and  demand.  Furthermore, 
this  same  law  determines  whether  we  shall  have  open  shop 
or  closed  shop.  When  the  demand  for  labor  exceeds  the 
supply,  then  the  men  are  in  the  ascendency  and  the  closed- 
shop  idea  is  naturally  strengthened;  but  when  the  supply 
of  men  exceeds  the  demand,  the  employers  are  in  the  saddle 
and  the  open-shop  idea  spreads.  Based  on  the  study  of  eco- 
nomic history,  I  forecast  that  the  question  will  never  be  com- 
pletely settled,  but  that  we  shall  continue  to  fluctuate  from 
the  closed-shop  idea  to  the  open-shop  idea  according  to  the 
demand  for  and  the  supply  of  labor. 

As  an  employer  I  naturally  favor  the  open  shop,  and  it  is 
surely  more  American  than  the  closed  shop.  On  the  other 
hand,  were  I  a  wage- worker,  I  would  favor  the  closed  shop. 
Were  labor  leaders  in  the  position  of  employers,  they  would 
be  working  for  the  open  shop;  while  if  we  employers  were 
in  the  position  of  labor  leaders,  we  would  be  working  for  the 
closed  shop. 

There,  however,  is  another  factor  in  the  situation,  namely. 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  121 

that  the  average  wage-worker  is  going  to  be  led  by  some- 
body. In  small  organizations  that  somebody  is  an  employer. 
The  workers  are  perfectly  happy  in  these  small  concerns  and 
no  labor  leader  has  a  look  in.  As  the  organization  becomes 
larger,  however,  especially  when  owned  by  scattered  stock- 
holders, this  personal  touch  between  employer  and  wage- 
worker  is  lost.  Then  is  the  time  when  the  labor  leader  gets 
in  his  work,  as  the  wage-workers  must  go  with  their  troubles 
to  some  one  who  they  feel  is  their  friend  and  leader.  The 
real  thing  which  keeps  the  labor  leaders  in  their  position  is 
the  inactivity  of  us  Christians.  It  is  the  same  reason  that 
gives  the  Tammany  politician  power,  namely,  that  he  is  per- 
sonally interested  in  the  welfare  of  his  constituents  three 
hundred  and  sixty-five  days  in  the  year,  while  we  reformers 
are  interested  in  them  for  about  three  weeks  before  election. 

The  fact  that  employers  are  now  in  the  saddle  and  are 
able  to  force  labor  to  terms,  break  up  unions,  etc.,  should  not 
be  looked  upon  as  anything  but  a  temporary  position.  The 
labor  problem  will  not  be  solved  in  any  such  way.  The  labor 
problem  will  be  solved  only  when  the  wage- workers  are 
interested  in  their  work  and  feel  right  toward  the  corpora- 
tions employing  them.  Then  and  only  then  will  real  labor 
costs  drop  back  to  where  they  ought  to  be.  This  can  be 
brought  about  only  by  reestablishing  the  personal  relation- 
ships between  employers  and  wage-workers  that  used  to 
exist  in  the  old  days.  The  employer,  either  through  stock- 
holders' committees,  or  employment  managers,  or  Christian 
foremen,  should  establish  the  personal  relationship,  friend- 
ship, and  help  that  the  labor  leader  has  been  supplying. 

Ultimately  public  welfare  will  limit  the  activities  of  both 
employers  and  wage-workers.  The  right  to  combine — like 
the  right  to  hold  private  property — is  only  a  permission 
granted  by  the  community,  to  foster  enterprise  and  encourage 
savings.  It  is  granted  on  the  assumption  that  the  community 
is  better  off  with  such  combinations.  Whenever  the  com- 
munity finds  it  is  better  off  without  such  combinations,  the 
permission  can  and  will  be  withdrawn.  This  would,  of  course, 
precipitate  a  conflict. 

It  seems  to  me  that  you  graduates,  as  you  go  out 
into  the  world,  should  not  attempt  to  give  specific 
I 


122     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

advice  either  to  wage-workers  or  employers  in  con- 
nection with  the  solution  of  the  industrial  problem. 
It  is  a  technical  matter.  Every  case  is  different  from 
every  other  case.  You,  however,  are  justified  in 
laying  down,  and  you  should  lay  down,  certain  fun- 
damental, economic,  religious  principles.  You  should 
drive  those  home  at  every  opportunity,  to  wage- 
workers,  employers,  and  consumers,  making  clear 
that  the  problem  will  be  solved  only  as  both  become 
imbued  with  the  spirit  of  Jesus.  I  honestly  feel  that 
those  cases  in  which  I  have  been  a  factor  have  been 
won,  not  by  refusing  to  go  the  second  mile,  but  by 
going  the  second  mile. 

I  wish  there  were  time  for  me  to  give  a  little  per- 
sonal testimony.  I  was  born  in  Gloucester,  Mass., 
and  was  converted  down  there  when  about  sixteen 
years  of  age,  at  a  revival  series  of  meetings  in  the 
Methodist  Church,  conducted  by  a  man  named  Mun- 
hall.  If  any  one  knows  him  let  them  tell  him  about 
me.  I  have  never  seen  him  since,  and  that  was 
twenty-five  years  ago.  I  was  very  much  interested 
in  the  Christian  work ;  went  into  it  head  over  heels, 
and  became  interested  in  the  Christian  Endeavor 
Society  and  the  Y.  M.  C.  A.  I  was  very  active  in 
Christian  work  in  Gloucester.  Then  I  came  to  Bos- 
ton to  study  at  one  of  your  leading  educational  in- 
stitutions of  New  England — steeped  in  materialism. 
Unfortunately  every  month  there  I  thought  less  of 
the  church  and  Christianity,  and  more  of  money, 
statistics,  economics,  philosophy,  and  certain  other 
subjects  which,  as  they  were  taught,  led  me  astray. 
I  even  went  so  far  as  to  write  asking  to  have  my 
membership  in  the  Congregational  church  canceled, 
because  I  thought  the  whole  thing  was  "  bosh."  I 


The  Christian  Faith  and  Industry  123 

graduated  from  that  institution  and  went  to  work 
in  connection  with  the  statistical  department  of  a 
bond  house.  From  morning  until  night  I  was  feed- 
ing upon  the  statistics  of  the  nations  of  the  world, 
all  groups  and  classes  and  peoples ;  and  there  I  was 
reconverted  by  statistics.  I  found  that  the  common 
idea,  namely,  that  everything  came  from  the  land 
and  labor,  was  false. 

Statistics  showed  me  that  there  was  more  land, 
more  natural  resources,  a  thousand  years  ago  than 
today ;  that  there  is  more  land,  resources,  people,  and 
labor  in  China  than  there  is  in  our  own  country.  I 
might  give  you  scores  of  illustrations  to  show  you 
that  the  fundamental  truth  in  economics,  that  all 
comes  from  land  and  labor,  is  absolutely  false  and 
cannot  be  demonstrated  at  all.  I  found  as  I  began 
to  study  statistics  that  there  was  a  third  factor,  and 
when  that  third  factor  struck  a  nation  or  a  class  or 
a  group  or  a  community,  then  the  land  and  the  labor 
became  inspired  with  the  spirit  of  service,  and  we 
had  some  semblance  of  civilization.  There  is  just 
as  much  land  and  labor  in  the  heart  of  Africa  today 
as  there  is  in  America ;  but  the  heart  of  Africa  lacks 
that  religion,  that  Christianity,  that  inspiration  that 
is  to  civilization  what  fertilization  is  to  an  egg,  what 
the  spring  is  to  a  watch,  what  love  is  to  man. 

Ah,  men,  my  final  words  to  you  are  those  of 
Towson,  that  great  international  industrial  leader 
of  our  Y.  M.  C.  A.  ^ 

Business  consists  not  of  machinery,  markets,  or  material; 
the  greatest  thing  in  business  is  not  machinery,  markets,  or 
material,  but  rather  men.  And  the  greatest  thing  in  man  is 
not  mind,  or  muscle,  or  body,  but  rather  soul.  Wages,  prices, 
markets  can  be  adjusted,  but  the  soul  of  man  which  deter- 


124     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

mines  his  methods  and  purposes  and  his  heart's  pulses,  can 
only  be  converted. 

And  so  I  say  that,  in  the  last  analysis,  the  solution 
of  our  labor  problem  lies  in  filling  the  hearts  of  the 
employer,  the  wage-worker,  and  the  consumer  with 
the  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SPIRIT  AND  INTER- 
NATIONAL RELATIONS 

By  Edward  Caldwell  Moore,  D.  D., 

Parkman  Professor  of  Theology  and  Plummer  Professor  of 
Christian  Morals  in  Harvard  University. 


THE  CHRISTIAN  SPIRIT  AND  INTER- 
NATIONAL RELATIONS 


DOUBTLESS  I  owe  my  invitation  to  deliver  this 
lecture  in  part  to  the  fact  that  I  have  been  for 
years  connected  with  the  American  Board  of  Com- 
missioners for  Foreign  Missions.  This  is  one  of  the 
many  organizations  through  which  Christian  people 
of  our  country  have  long  sought  to  cultivate  certain 
international  relations.  Such  a  society  seeks  to 
spread  the  knowledge  of  the  gospel  of  Jesus.  It 
endeavors  to  propagate  the  Christian  spirit  in  the 
world.  It  seeks  to  bestow  some  of  the  gifts  of  Chris- 
tian civilization  and  to  bind  men  together  in  Chris- 
tian hope  and  love.  Identification  with  this  work 
has  led  me  to  study  other  aspects  of  the  contact  of 
the  western  world  with  the  Orient  and  Africa  in 
that  movement  of  expansion  of  Christendom  which 
has  been  going  on  since  the  Renaissance.  I  have 
lectured  in  my  university  and  written  books  upon 
these  subjects.  I  have  conceived  the  impulse  among 
us  which  has  sought  to  bring  the  faith  of  Jesus  and 
the  spirit  of  the  life  according  to  that  faith  to  all 
mankind,  to  be  but  one  phase  of  a  tendency  in  our 
modern  world  which  has  for  its  aim  to  make  the 
forces  of  our  civilization  felt  over  the  whole  earth, 
to  make  all  the  gains  of  the  long  lifetime  of  humanity 
available  for  every  race.  I  have  had  some  privilege 
of  travel.  I  have  spent  nearly  seven  years  of  the 
last  thirty-five  either  in  Europe  or  the  East.    I  have 


128     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

known  a  good  many  men  of  different  nationalities  in 
Asia  or  Africa,  some  of  them  rather  well.  The  ad- 
ministration of  a  society  of  this  sort  brings  one  into 
relations  with  Europeans  also,  not  merely  those 
bearing  similar  responsibilities,  but  as  well  with 
leaders  in  politics  and  commerce,  in  education  and 
reform.  I  have  thus  indicated  the  background  of 
certain  convictions  upon  my  part  touching  this 
theme.  I  am  grateful  to  President  Horr  and  to  the 
founders  of  the  Greene  lectureship  for  the  oppor- 
tunity of  expressing  these  convictions. 

We  feel  that  the  Christian  spirit  is  the  inner 
secret  of  our  civilization.  Without  this  our  civiliza- 
tion would  never  have  become  what  it  is.  In  the  loss 
of  this  spirit  that  civilization  is  doomed.  We  have 
seen  the  spread  of  the  gospel  produce  a  degree  of 
civilization  among  men  who  had  none.  We  have 
seen  it  transform  in  a  measure  the  civilizations  of 
races  which  had  and  still  have  different  faiths  from 
ours.  We  have  seen  certain  other  elements  of  our 
civilization  either  forced  upon  some  unwilling  na- 
tions or,  again,  eagerly  appropriated  by  others — in 
both  cases  to  their  disaster.  We  have  come  to  realize 
that  this  assimilation  by  Eastern  nations  of  our 
Western  standards  in  government  and  diplomacy,  in 
military  and  naval  administration,  in  trade  and  edu- 
cation, and  even  in  some  phases  of  social  life,  is  go- 
ing forward  irresistibly.  If  it  goes  on  thus  as  a 
purely  materialistic  and  secular  movement  it  will 
be  almost  infinitely  injurious.  It  will  undermine  the 
tradition  of  morals  and  destroy  or  gravely  injure  the 
ancient  faiths  of  men  and  put  nothing  in  their  place. 
We  feel  that  it  is  the  highest  duty  of  the  church  to 
see  to  it  that  the  Christian  spirit  has  its  full  share 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     129 


in  this  world  movement.  Mission  work  viewed  in 
this  larger  way  ought,  above  all  other  works  that  I 
can  think  of,  to  draw  the  ends  of  the  earth  together. 
It  has  to  do  with  universal  needs  and  with  satisfac- 
tions for  those  needs.  It  undertakes  to  create  a  level 
of  respectful  and  sympathetic  contact  with  all  races, 
in  the  various  aspects  of  their  civilization,  in  the 
manifold  traditions  of  their  culture  and  diversities 
of  their  faiths.  These  faiths  we  view  as,  one  and  all 
of  them,  evidence  of  men's  seeking  after  God,  and 
witness  of  God's  answer  to  their  cry.  We  feel  the 
unity  of  humanity  and  the  tragedy  of  the  suspicions 
and  fears,  the  hatreds  and  violence,  the  misunder- 
standings and  selfish  interests,  which  prevent  that 
unity  from  finding  its  expression. 

In  some  such  terms  as  these,  I  might  have  de- 
scribed the  international  problem  of  the  Christian 
spirit  in  the  phase  which  that  problem  had  assumed 
in  the  minds  of  American  Christians  before  the  war. 
For  I  assume  that  it  is  mainly  of  the  manifestation 
of  the  Christian  spirit  by  us  Americans  in  our  in- 
ternational relations  that  I  am  expected  here  to 
speak.  It  was  then  mainly  the  problem  of  our 
proper  relation  to  non-Christian  peoples  which  we 
had  in  mind  when  we  spoke  of  internationalism.  We 
had  acquired  a  measure  of  understanding  of  the  non- 
Christian  world.  That  w^orld  was  on  the  whole  well 
disposed  toward  America.  Those  peoples  were  con- 
fident of  our  interest  in  them.  They  believed  that 
we  cherished  no  merely  selfish  interest.  We  had  not 
been  entangled,  as  had  some  of  the  European  na- 
tions, through  their  desire  to  appropriate  Asiatic  or 
African  territory.  Nor  had  we  as  yet  in  large  or 
very  disreputable  ways  been  compromised  in  our 


130     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

relations  with  them  in  trade.  I  speak  cautiously,  for 
there  have  been  deplorable  aspects  of  the  trade  and 
diplomacy  of  every  nation  with  the  non-Christian 
world.  The  slave  trade  and  the  liquor  traffic  were 
surely  iniquitous  enough.  We  had  our  full  share  in 
those.  The  exploitation  which  took  place  under  cer- 
tain concessions  was  certainly  reprehensible.  Yet 
on  the  whole  one  may  say  that  our  relations  had  been 
upon  a  fairly  high  plane.  That  was  an  advantage. 
It  was  the  explanation  of  the  fact  that  some  of  these 
nations  in  their  trouble  looked  to  us  for  aid  and 
understanding,  rather  than  to  European  states.  We 
should  be  careful  not  to  betray  this  trust  nor, 
through  absorption  in  our  own  interests  and  fear  of 
the  vastness  of  new  responsibilities,  unnecessarily  to 
disappoint  their  hopes.  We  need  to  be  on  our  guard 
lest,  while  we  declaim  against  this  or  that  wrong  in 
the  past  policy  of  other  nations  in  their  dealing  with 
Orientals,  we  ourselves  be  found  guilty  of  like  injus- 
tice and  inhumanity. 

This  question  of  our  relation  as  Americans  and 
Christians  to  the  farthest  corners  of  the  earth  and 
the  non-Christian  peoples  is,  however,  no  longer  the 
whole,  nor  is  it  even  the  main,  point  to  which  we 
ought  to  speak  when  we  now  inquire  concerning 
international  relations.  The  war  has  changed  all 
that.  It  is  a  curious  thing,  is  it  not,  that  in  a  sense 
our  international  relations  had  been  really  closer 
with  Asia  than  they  were  with  Europe?  A  century 
and  a  quarter  ago,  when  we  began  our  missions,  we 
were  on  the  whole  rather  remote  in  our  mental  and 
spiritual  attitude  toward  Europe.  We  were  dis- 
posed to  exaggerate  our  independence  of  Europe. 
We  were  suspicious  of  all  closer  relations  in  that 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     131 

quarter.  We  had  just  fought  a  war  for  indepen- 
dence. We  had  been  warned  by  our  first  president 
against  entangling  alliances.  We  had  the  self-con- 
sciousness and  self-confidence  of  extreme  youth.  We 
resented  being  patronized.  We  had  a  huge  problem 
of  our  own  upon  which  to  concentrate  our  energies. 
We  gave  ourselves  to  the  development  of  our  own 
resources.  The  War  of  1812,  the  Monroe  Doctrine, 
some  of  our  experiences  in  the  Civil  War,  enhanced 
this  mood.  Transportation  was  poor  in  those  days, 
communication  inadequate.  Immigration  was  large 
only  toward  the  end  of  the  period  of  which  I  speak. 
The  historian  of  culture  is  amazed  to  realize  what 
a  relatively  isolated  life  we  Americans  led  until  after 
the  middle  of  the  nineteenth  century.  The  result 
is  that,  at  this  very  moment,  and  despite  our  partici- 
pation in  the  Great  War,  there  is  a  portentous  lack 
of  wide  and  accurate  knowledge  of  European  aflfairs 
upon  the  part  of  large  numbers  of  our  fellow  citi- 
zens. Their  scant  sympathy  with  Europe  in  the 
present  crisis  is  due  in  considerable  measure  to  their 
ignorance.  We  were  for  a  long  time  a  little  people 
in  a  fabulously  large  territory.  We  were  too  poor 
to  be  the  prey  of  others  and  too  rich  to  wish  to  make 
others  our  prey.  We  were  alienated  from  the  lands 
of  our  own  ancestors.  Something  like  this  usually 
happens  after  family  quarrels.  We  found  it  easier 
to  cultivate  Japanese  and  Chinese  and  Indians  than 
British  and  Germans  and  French.  It  is  always 
easier  to  patronize  than  to  be  patronized.  It  is  often 
pleasanter  to  help  than  to  be  helped.  It  is  easier  to 
overcome  strangeness  than  to  put  an  end  to  estrange- 
ment. We  were  in  our  nursery  in  those  days  of  the 
childhood  of  our  nation.    The  isolation  of  a  nursery 


132     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

is  a  good  thing  for  children.  It  is  not  so  good  for 
adults. 

The  European  nations  had  long  had  complex  and 
delicate  international  relations  among  themselves, 
on  the  basis  of  treaties,  like  that  of  Westphalia  or 
of  Utrecht  or  that  which  ended  the  Seven  Years' 
War,  on  the  basis  of  the  doctrine  of  the  balance  of 
power,  in  the  coalitions  against  Napoleon  and  again 
in  the  time  of  the  Crimean  War,  of  the  Triple  Al- 
liance, and  of  the  rise  of  the  Entente.  But  we  Amer- 
icans had  stood  outside  of  all  that.  The  Great  War 
was  almost  three  years  old  before  it  was  evident  to 
us  all  that  we  could  stand  outside  no  longer.  We 
were  in  a  sense  more  remote  from  an  international 
attitude  of  mind  toward  Europe  than  toward  Asia, 
until  four  years  ago.  In  point  of  governmental  ideas 
some  at  least  of  those  nations  would  have  been  hos- 
tile to  our  principles.  In  respect  of  education  and 
almost  of  trade  they  had  no  great  need  of  us.  If 
one  of  us  had  then  said  anything  about  Christian 
relations  he  would  have  had  in  mind  at  the  utmost 
comity.  We  should  have  said,  "  Have  they  not  their 
own  religious  institutions?"  This  standing  apart 
from  the  rest  of  Christendom,  this  remoteness  from 
the  problems  of  the  Christian  world,  we  had  found  it 
not  difficult  to  maintain.  The  war  has  ended  forever 
a  situation  in  which  that  had  been  a  natural  and  per- 
haps even  proper  attitude  upon  our  part. 

The  war,  with  the  suffering  which  it  involved, 
with  the  cruelty  which  it  engendered,  with  the  un- 
scrupulousness  to  which  it  gave  scope,  and  the  pas- 
sions which  it  let  loose,  with  the  waste  which  it 
occasioned,  with  the  sordid  or  atrocious  aims  which 
it  betrayed  and  the  desperate  means  for  the  attain- 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations      133 


ment  of  those  aims  which  it  justified,  shocked  us  into 
the  inquiry,  How  Christian  is  Christendom?  It 
caused  us  to  review  the  course  of  all  the  Christian 
nations,  including  our  own,  in  their  contacts  and 
conflicts  with  others  and  among  themselves.  It 
raised  questions  about  the  moral  standard  and  spir- 
itual ideals  which  had  prevailed.  It  prompted  in- 
quiry as  to  the  ethical  foundations  upon  which  the 
structure  of  our  civilization  rested.  It  made  us 
aware  of  tendencies  long  prevalent  within  the  Chris- 
tian nations,  including  our  own,  which,  as  we  now 
look  back  upon  them,  made  the  war  inevitable.  It 
challenged  us  with  the  query,  "  What  can  we  do  to 
prevent  the  recurrence  of  such  a  catastrophe  ?  "  It 
made  us  conscious  of  monstrous  inconsistencies  with 
Christian  principle  in  international  relations,  of  the 
rottenness  of  our  social  structure,  of  the  unsound- 
ness of  our  economic  policies,  of  the  selfish  individ- 
ualism of  nations  in  the  face  of  evils  which  mutual 
understanding  and  good-will  might  have  checked. 
It  brought  to  our  attention  the  fact  that,  however 
much  of  progress  the  Christian  spirit  might  have 
made  in  its  mastery  over  individual  lives,  there  was 
only  too  little  of  such  mastery  over  men  in  their 
classes  and  masses,  in  their  national  and  interna- 
tional dealings.  We  were  scandalized  to  learn  that 
in  some  quarters,  at  least,  the  notion  of  a  national, 
and  still  more  of  an  international,  morality  and 
idealism  was  mocked  at.  It  was  calmly  asserted 
that  no  such  control  of  the  conduct  of  nations  was 
to  be  expected  or  desired. 

It  is  but  fair  to  say  that  the  anguish  of  the  war 
developed  among  us  an  internationalism  of  a  very 
high  order,  of  a  genuine  moral  and  spiritual  sort. 


134     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

No  one  could  wish  the  war  back.  Yet  few  can  fail 
to  wish  that  we  might  live  again  in  the  generous 
sentiment,  the  lofty  idealism,  the  pure  altruism,  in 
which  we  lived  during  the  two  years  after  we  took 
our  place  in  responsibility  for  the  welfare  of  the 
world  and  were  gladly  paying  the  price.  No  one  can 
say  that  we  have  not  fallen  off  most  grievously.  We 
have  disappointed  others.  We  are  profoundly  dis- 
appointed in  ourselves.  Our  leaders  have  failed  us, 
but  if  we  had  not  failed  within  ourselves  we  should 
have  had  different  leadership.  The  lassitude  which 
follows  a  war  has  seized  upon  us,  although  we  suf- 
fered so  little.  Our  own  selfish  concerns  have  bulked 
large  exactly  because  our  minds  and  hearts  are  not 
filled  with  generous  solicitude  for  those  who  are  far 
worse  off  than  ourselves.  We  resemble  those  people 
whose  trivial  ailments  occupy  all  of  their  attention 
because  they  have  no  worthier  concerns  to  think 
about.  The  old  ignorance  and  indifference  have 
again  possessed  us.  We  had  not  sufficient  intellec- 
tual and  moral  preparation  for  that  manifestation  of 
Christian  spirit  in  international  relations  which  the 
world  sorely  needs  and  which  we  once  really  thought 
that  we  were  going  to  give.  We  must  educate  and 
discipline  ourselves  upon  the  task  imposed  upon  us. 
We  must  let  the  effort  cost  us  more  than  it  costs  any 
one  else.  For  we  are,  of  all  peoples,  the  one  which 
has  most  wherewith  to  pay  the  cost.  We  must  do  it 
for  the  sake  of  our  own  souls,  for  we  are  the  ones 
who  need  most  to  pay  that  cost. 

In  what  I  have  said  thus  far  I  may  seem  to  you 
to  have  begun  at  the  remoter  end  of  the  problem  of 
the  relation  of  Christian  Americans  to  the  nations 
of  the  earth.    I  began  with  the  non-Christian  races. 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     135 

In  a  way  that  seemed  the  natural  thing  to  do  as  we 
recall  the  occasion  which  brings  us  together,  the 
vantage  from  which  I  speak,  and  the  interest  of  the 
church  and  of  this  theological  school  in  the  mis- 
sionary motive.  Also  it  is  true  that  we  have  thus 
followed  the  chronological  order,  because  our  inter- 
est in  the  remoter  and  non-Christian  lands  was 
developed  earlier  than  was  any  parallel  sense  of  our 
duty  to  Europe.  Furthermore,  the  treatment  of  one 
of  these  problems  is  comparatively  simple.  That 
of  the  other  is  complex  and  baffling.  On  the  whole, 
we  are  more  nearly  in  a  position  to  treat  our  oriental 
problem  at  the  level  of  the  ideals  which  belong  to  it. 
In  the  other,  we  are  already  finding  our  high  ideals 
of  the  war-years  hard  to  maintain.  Finally,  pressing 
as  may  be  our  questions  as  we  face  Asia,  the  task 
which  confronts  us  in  Europe  is  more  pressing  by 
far.  If  there  is  any  advantage  in  the  order  I  have 
chosen,  it  lies  in  my  being  able,  when  I  shall  have 
laid  my  case  before  you,  to  bring  to  bear,  at  the  end 
of  this  hour  together,  all  the  urgency  that  is  in  me 
upon  the  problem  of  the  relation  of  Christian  Amer- 
ica to  the  Christian  nations  of  Europe,  the  mother- 
countries  of  us  all,  from  which  only  the  Atlantic 
divides.  For  we  are  but  the  other  half  of  Christen- 
dom and  only  another  Europe  oversea. 

Before  I  go  on,  however,  I  feel  that  we  must  de- 
vote a  moment  to  the  consideration  of  a  third  sense 
of  the  word  international.  We  must  consider  an 
entirely  new  kind  of  internationalism  which  has 
suddenly  come  within  our  ken.  It  emerges  in  every 
kind  of  perplexing  contrast  with  that  which  we  have 
heretofore  understood  as  internationalism.  To  it, 
quite  as  much  as  to  that  other,  we  must  somehow 


136     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

establish  relations  which  are  worthy  of  Christian 
men.  Hitherto  we  have  understood  by  the  interna- 
tional mind  that  which  seeks  to  recognize  and  do 
justice  to  the  rights  of  men  of  all  nations.  We  un- 
derstood by  it  the  mind  which  acknowledges  the 
duty  of  the  citizen  of  any  nation  to  the  citizens  of 
all.  We  understood  by  it  the  temper  on  our  part 
which,  while  deeply  loving  our  own  country,  appre- 
ciates the  fact  that  it  is  as  natural  for  men  of  other 
lands  to  love  theirs.  Our  own  traditions  and  history 
are  dear  to  us,  but  so  are  theirs  to  them.  Interna- 
tionalism was  not  incompatible  with  a  pure  patriot- 
ism, just  as  my  love  for  my  own  home  made  me  no 
enemy  of  other  men  in  their  homes.  It  was  not  in- 
compatible with  a  pure  patriotism  but  only  with  an 
exaggerated,  an  unworthy,  and  selfish  provincialism. 
Still  less  did  it  make  me  an  enemy  of  the  govern- 
ment of  my  own  nation.  It  was  a  spirit  which,  with- 
out forfeiting  the  love  of  home  or  a  just  pride  in  our 
own  race,  yet  deplored  the  fact  that  the  geographical 
distribution  of  races,  their  historical  inheritances, 
their  temperamental  differences,  their  selfish  inter- 
ests, had  been  the  occasion  of  wars  without  number, 
with  all  the  miseries  incident  to  these  and  all  the  ruin 
of  the  higher  aspects  of  civilization  which  they  en- 
tailed. They  are  still  the  sources  of  misunderstand- 
ings which  threaten  ever  again  to  lead  to  new  wars. 
They  obscure  the  fact  of  the  common  humanity. 
They  postpone  and  prevent  due  appreciation  of  the 
needs  and  higher  interest  of  mankind  as  a  whole. 

Before  the  war  we  had  cause  to  feel  that  this 
sentiment  of  internationalism  was  spreading  more 
and  more  widely.  The  universal  suffering  and  the 
common  danger  of  the  war,  contrition  for  the  mon- 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     137 


strous  evils  of  that  conflict,  and  the  resolve  that  such 
a  conflict  should  not  occur  again,  all  made,  for  a 
moment,  for  the  yet  wider  dissemination  of  this 
view.  It  is  one  of  the  bitter  disappointments  of  the 
period  since  the  armistice,  it  is  a  new  cause  for 
anxiety  and  shame,  despite  the  discussion  of  treaties 
and  leagues  and  covenants,  despite  congresses  and 
conferences  and  peace  literature  without  limit,  that 
there  has  been  such  an  ominous  resurgence  of  old 
nationalisms  and,  as  well,  such  a  perilous  injection  of 
passionate  new  ones,  on  the  basis  of  a  vague  senti- 
ment about  self-determination,  that  we  are  put  upon 
wondering  whether  the  last  stage  of  our  interna- 
tionalism, is  not  to  be  worse  than  the  first.  And, 
as  if  of  troubles  this  were  not  enough,  there  now 
emerges  a  clamorous  demand  for  an  international- 
ism of  an  altogether  different  sort.  The  new  inter- 
nationalism does  not  seek  to  make  us  more  friendly 
toward  all  men  living  under  governments  other  than 
their  own.  It  seeks  to  make  men  hostile  to  all  gov- 
ernments whatsoever,  including  their  own.  It  repu- 
diates nationalism,  but  not  in  the  sense  which  I 
above  described.  It  repudiates  the  old  sense  of  inter- 
nationalism, as  well,  since  this  would  seek  to  make 
all  men  one  in  mutual  good-will  despite  their  differ- 
ences. It  seeks  to  make  one  all  men  of  a  particular 
class  in  economic  society,  in  spite  of  their  differences 
of  nationality.  It  seeks  the  solidarity  of  all  repre- 
sentatives of  this  one  class  in  all  the  nations,  in 
order  that  they  may  overthrow  their  respective  na- 
tions along  with  all  the  others.  It  seeks  their  soli- 
darity for  the  purpose  of  making  them  more  effec- 
tively hostile  to  men  of  all  other  economic  classes 
wheresoever  found.  It  is  eager  to  throw  down  divi- 
K 


138     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

sions  of  mankind  which  already  exist,  but  not  be- 
cause it  is  eager  to  throw  down  divisions.  It  is  eager 
to  throw  down  the  divisions  of  mankind  which  have 
existed,  but  only  in  order  to  introduce  new  ones 
which  are  everywhere  to  come  into  play.  It  is  eager 
to  unite  the  men  of  one  class,  as  this  exists  in  every 
nation,  against  all  other  classes,  as  these  exist  in 
every  nation,  but  not  because  it  deplores  class  dis- 
tinctions. It  is  farthest  removed  from  desiring  to  do 
away  with  these.  It  magnifies  them,  entrenches 
them,  embitters  them.  It  exploits  them  as  the  very 
instrument  of  its  victory  in  the  war  which  it  would 
declare  within  every  nation,  in  place  of  the  racial 
animosities  which  have  heretofore  caused  wars  be- 
tween nations. 

I  might  describe  the  matter  graphically  somewhat 
after  this  fashion.  Instead  of  the  boundaries  of 
countries  which  have  heretofore  been  only  too  much 
like  great  upright  walls  separating  one  people  from 
another,  we  are  now  to  have  horizontal  divisions  be- 
tween class  and  class  and  running  through  all  the 
peoples.  These  are  to  separate  absolutely  the  inheri- 
tors of  name  and  power  and  fortune,  and  also  those 
who,  in  a  society  so  organized,  have  been  able  to 
acquire  name  or  power  or  fortune,  from  their  fellows 
by  a  great  gulf  fixed.  They  are  to  develop  the  con- 
trarieties which  are  occasioned  by  rank  or  money  or 
culture  into  the  occasion  of  a  universal  conflict,  until 
at  last  these  contrarieties  and  all  varieties  are  done 
away.  The  hostility  to  governments,  as  these  exist, 
is  because  they,  one  and  all,  have  condoned  if  not 
created  these  contrarieties.  They  have  tolerated  and 
even  fostered  these  varieties. 

This  is  not  the  place  to  go  into  a  discussion  of  the 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     139 


principle  which  is  here  involved.  The  paragraph 
has  no  interest  except  to  remind  you  of  a  new  and 
pungent  sense  in  which  the  word  internationalism 
is  being  used.  It  has  no  purpose  except  to  point  out 
that  it  is  not  a  unity  of  the  human  race  which  this 
program  has  in  mind.  It  is  not  a  recognition  of 
the  good  qualities  of  those  to  whose  virtues  we  may 
have  been  tragically  blind.  It  is  not  the  effort  to  be 
contrite  for  our  prejudices  against  others  through 
our  absorption  in  ourselves.  It  is  not  an  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  universal  duty  to  do  good  to  all, 
where  we  have  done  ill  to  many.  Quite  the  con- 
trary. On  its  own  avowed  terms,  it  is  an  effort  to 
do  good,  at  the  most,  to  men  of  one's  own  class  in 
every  nation  and  to  do  harm  to  men  of  every  other 
class  in  every  nation.  It  is,  at  the  best,  the  effort 
to  substitute  one  set  of  calamitous  divisions  for  an- 
other. Whatever  may  have  been  the  sins  of  classes 
one  against  another,  it  is  difficult  to  see  how  the 
hope  of  the  world  lies  in  this  contention.  Whatever 
be  the  provocation  offered  by  aristocracy  and  capi- 
talism, however  just  the  resentment  against  these, 
there  is  nothing  in  the  history  of  the  world  nor  in  the 
course  of  events  now  taking  place  to  make  us  believe 
that  the  millennium,  even  the  economic  and  social 
millennium,  lies  in  this  direction.  There  is  every- 
thing in  the  history  of  the  world  to  make  us  fear 
that,  at  this  level,  nothing  will  happen  except  that 
gradually  a  new  aristocracy  and  a  new  capitalism 
will  take  the  place  of  the  old  which  will  have  been 
overthrown.  There  is  not  much  here  except  the  dif- 
ference between  the  "  outs  "  and  the  "  ins."  There 
is  not  much  involved  for  the  advancement  of  the 
world,  save  that  in  every  such  revolution  a  large 


140     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

part  of  the  finest  fruits  of  civilization  are  lost  and 
have  then,  with  infinite  pains  and  patience,  to  be 
regained.  They  are  always  regained  by  a  different 
kind  of  man  from  the  revolutionary. 

We  cannot  understand  our  own  difficult  time  with- 
out appreciating  how  this  cross  current  runs  under 
and  over  the  current  of  the  kind  of  internationalism 
with  which  we  have  been  familiar.  It  takes  advan- 
tage of  the  international  confusion  to  render  that 
confusion  worse  confounded.  If  we  inquire  as  to 
the  relation  of  the  Christian  spirit  to  international- 
ism on  this  new  basis,  the  answer  is  not  far  to  seek. 
It  may  be  given  without  fear  that  we  are  merely 
voicing  prejudice.  The  Christian  spirit  can  live  no 
better  with  an  internationalism  of  this  sort  than  it 
could  live  with  the  frenzied  and  unscrupulous  na- 
tionalism which  brought  on  the  war  from  which  we 
have  just  emerged.  It  is  only  candid  to  add  that 
this  new  internationalism  has  never,  so  far  as  I 
know,  claimed  to  live  with  the  Christian  spirit  or 
professed  that  it  desired  to  have  the  Christian  spirit 
live  with  it.  In  contrast,  the  arrant  and  ofttimes 
atrocious  nationalisms  of  the  old  sort,  of  which  we 
vainly  hoped  that  the  war  had  made  an  end,  were 
very  often  defended  by  that  which  called  itself  the 
Christian  spirit.  If,  however,  any  denial,  of  any 
sort,  of  the  unity  of  humanity,  any  denial  of  the 
rights  of  all  and  the  duties  of  all,  is  inconsistent  with 
the  Christian  spirit  then,  at  least  we  know  which 
way  we  have  to  go.  The  proletarian  is  only  doing 
over  again,  from  his  own  new  point  of  view,  what 
conquering  tribalism  and  divine-right  kings  and 
devil-take-the-hindmost  capitalists  have  all  done  in 
their  turn.    He  has  a  long  score  to  wipe  out.     One 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     141 

must  sometimes  think  that  there  are  extenuating 
circumstances  in  his  case,  even  when  we  are  most 
fain  to  call  him  reckless  and  blind.  None  the  less, 
the  salvation  of  society  does  not  lie  his  way.  Also, 
it  must  be  conceded,  we  ourselves  have  never  too  well 
trodden  the  way  in  which  we  have  professed  to  be- 
lieve that  the  salvation  of  the  world  does  lie.  We 
assert  that  the  Christian  spirit  is  the  solution  of  all 
the  international  difficulties  which  we  face.  It  is 
quite  clear  that  we  must  take  into  the  scope  of  our 
discussion  the  class  problem,  as  well  as  the  race 
problem,  because  there  is  not  a  corner  of  the  habit- 
able world  in  which,  at  this  very  moment,  these  two 
problems  are  not  wrestling  one  with  another  and 
threatening  all  the  institutions  of  civilization,  as  we 
have  understood  civilization  thus  far. 

This  brings  me  to  my  next  point.  I  would  call 
attention  to  the  fact  that,  with  ever-accelerating 
pace,  through  the  last  two  generations  before  the 
war,  the  boundaries  of  nationality  were  already 
breaking  down.  A  common  type  of  life  and  civiliza- 
tion was  coming  to  ascendency  on  the  whole  face  of 
the  earth.  It  was  the  tendency  toward  assimilation 
of  an  economic  and  industrial  system  heretofore 
identified  only  with  Europe  and  America  which  had 
aroused  in  parts  of  the  East  a  class-feeling  closely 
akin  to  that  which  we  met  with  in  the  West.  We 
said  we  should  begin  with  speaking  of  the  non-Chris- 
tian nation.  But  are  there  any  wholly  non-Christian 
nations?  Most  certainly  there  are  not,  just  as  also 
there  are  none  which  are  wholly  Christian.  There 
is  not  a  nation  in  the  non-Christian  world  in  which 
there  are  not  today  many  converts  to  Christianity. 
There  are  Christian  churches  and  educational  in- 


142     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

stitutions  and  hospitals  which  are  often  entirely  on 
the  responsibility  of  the  indigenous  peoples.  These 
are  taking  over  the  whole  apparatus  of  the  Christian 
life  from  the  hands  of  foreigners.  Such  organiza- 
tions are  the  fruit  of  the  missionary  endeavor  of  the 
last  century.  They  are  the  seed  of  a  new  Christen- 
dom in  Asia  and  Africa.  Besides,  there  are  the  rem- 
nants of  ancient  Christian  peoples,  far  older  than 
any  of  our  churches,  older  than  any  of  our  nations. 
Their  ancestors  were  Christians  of  high  culture 
when  ours  were  wild-men  and  pagans.  They  have 
been  long  under  the  heel  of  the  Moslem  oppressor. 
Their  Christian  thought  and  life  had  stagnated.  Our 
task,  in  reverence  for  their  age-long  struggle  and 
suffering,  was  only  to  do  what  we  could  to  aid  them 
in  the  renewal  of  their  own  spiritual  life.  How  have 
the  Armenians  and  other  Christians  in  the  Near 
East  stood  to  their  faith  in  the  years  just  past? 

Besides  this  conscious  Christianity,  there  is  also  a 
still  wider  and  more  or  less  unconscious  penetration 
of  Christian  ideas  and  permeation  of  Christian  prin- 
ciples in  the  institutions  and  policies  of  all  the 
peoples  of  which  we  speak.  There  has  been  an 
actual  assimilation  to  Christian  standards  in  much 
of  the  life  and  thought  of  peoples  who  still  retain 
their  old  faiths  or  who,  even  if  they  have  lost  these, 
show  no  disposition  to  take  ours.  These  persons  are, 
like  many  among  us,  purely  secular  in  mind.  Yet 
they  are  much  moved  by  ethical  and  humanitarian, 
as  well  as  by  governmental  and  commercial  impulses 
derived  through  their  contacts  with  Christendom. 
These  factors  also  have  had  great  part  in  the  trans- 
formation which  is  going  on  throughout  the  world. 
They  are   partly   cause  and   partly  effect   of  the 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     143 

marked  tendency  to  conformity  in  the  Orient  to  a 
type  of  life  and  civilization  which  used  to  obtain 
only  in  Europe  and  America.  To  both  of  these  ele- 
ments in  the  life,  say,  of  Japan  or  of  China  or  of 
India,  we  ought  to  reach  out.  Both  of  them  reach 
out  to  us.  The  iirst  does  so  with  a  pathetic  longing 
for  our  sympathy,  with  gratitude  also  and  with  a 
hope  which  we  ought  not  to  disappoint.  The  others 
often  reach  out  to  us  with  an  eager  desire,  by  no 
means  for  our  Christianity,  but  rather  for  some  of 
the  many  elements  of  outward  greatness  which 
Christendom  possesses  and  by  which,  if  these  can  be 
adopted,  they  expect  to  be  able  to  resist  the  aggres- 
sion of  Christian  nations.  They  hope  thus  to  pro- 
tect themselves  against  the  violence  of  Christendom, 
to  prevent  the  partitionment  of  their  territories  and 
the  exploitation  of  their  resources  by  Christian  na- 
tions, a  fate  to  which  they  are  only  too  well  aware 
that  they  are  exposed.  It  can  escape  no  thoughtful 
observer  that  the  eagerness  of  the  East  to  appro- 
priate many  elements  of  the  civilization  developed 
in  the  West  springs  occasionally  from  a  genuine 
admiration,  but  perhaps  much  more  often  from  just 
the  opposite  emotion.  It  springs  from  the  fear  of 
the  West,  from  the  determination  of  the  East  to 
maintain  itself  as  over  against  the  West.  It  has  its 
root  not  in  trust,  but  in  distrust.  It  is  the  index  not 
at  all  of  a  mind  passive  and  plastic  to  our  influence. 
On  the  contrary,  it  springs  from  such  a  resurgence 
of  racial  and  national  feeling  as  both  the  Far  East 
and  the  Near  East  have  never  known  since  the 
Renaissance.  It  is  this  resurgence  of  self-conscious 
and  often  of  fierce  nationalism  in  an  East  which  is 
now  armed  with  all  the  weapons  of  the  West,  which 


144     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

we  have  to  note.  The  East  is  trained  in  all  the 
methods  of  the  West.  It  is  eager  to  imitate  the 
West  exactly  because  it  is  determined  to  resist  the 
West.  It  is  this  which  constitutes  part  of  our  prob- 
lem as  we  think  in  the  terms  of  international  rela- 
tions. You  have  only  to  read  the  Indian  newspapers 
of  the  day  to  note  how  political  maxims  which  were 
never  Oriental  are  now  part  and  parcel  of  the  con- 
tention of  Indians  and  Egyptians  against  British 
rule.  They  obtained  these  from  the  British  whom 
they  now  denounce  as  their  oppressors.  You  have 
only  to  think  how  industrial  and  commercial  meth- 
ods, which  were  never  current  in  China  or  Japan,  are 
now  brought  into  play  against  Americans  and  Euro- 
peans, from  whom  the  Chinese  and  Japanese  learned 
these  methods  not  two  generations  ago. 

The  first  period  of  the  impact  of  Europe  upon  the 
Orient  after  the  Renaissance  was  one  in  which  the 
ideal  was  one  of  conquest.  Then  came  an  era  in 
which  the  aim  was  trade.  It  must  be  said  that  the 
period  of  trade  was  scarcely  less  ruthless  than  that 
of  conquest.  For  a  long  time,  there  was  as  good  as 
no  effort  on  the  part  of  Europeans  to  impart  the 
better  elements  of  their  civilization  to  the  indigenous 
peoples.  There  was  little  or  no  appreciation  of  the 
fact  that  these  peoples  had  in  some  cases  a  civiliza- 
tion of  their  own.  With  the  end  of  the  eighteenth 
century,  there  came  a  great  change  in  the  adminis- 
tration of  European  colonies,  but  especially  in  that 
of  the  colonies  of  Great  Britain.  It  was  a  period  of 
important  changes  in  the  life  of  Great  Britain  itself. 
This  change  was  reflected  in  the  treatment  accorded 
the  races  which  were  beginning  to  be  welded  into 
the  vast  colonial  empire  of  Great  Britain  which  the 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     145 

nineteenth  century  knew.  No  one  can  read  the  his- 
tory of  India  since  Lord  William  Bentinck,  or  of 
Egypt  under  Lord  Cromer,  without  being  moved  to 
admiration  of  the  enlightening,  liberating,  elevating 
work  which  was  done  by  men  who  must  be  counted 
among  the  best  governors  and  greatest  benefactors 
of  peoples  whom  the  world  has  seen.  Yet  in  a  sense 
one  may  say  that  the  main  result  of  the  conferring 
upon  these  peoples  of  the  degree  of  liberty  and  en- 
lightenment which  they  have  is  that  they  aspire  to 
more.  No  other  policy  was  worthy  of  Great  Britain. 
But  could  this  policy  have  been  expected  to  have  any 
other  results  than  those  which  it  has  had?  We 
cannot  but  question,  as  to  some  of  these  peoples, 
whether  they  are  yet  competent  to  assume  the  grave 
responsibilities  to  which  nevertheless  they  aspire. 
Yet  can  they  do  otherwise  than  aspire  to  them?  Is 
there  any  way  of  dealing  with  the  situation  which 
is  thus  conjured  up  except  the  way  which  the 
patience  and  generosity  and  self-effacement  of  the 
spirit  of  the  gospel  enjoins?  Moreover,  that  Euro- 
pean prestige  suffered  a  great  shock  in  the  Orient 
in  consequence  of  the  war  is  patent  to  everybody. 
To  govern  by  mere  prestige  is  no  longer  possible. 
To  govern  by  mere  force  would  be  monstrous,  even 
if  it  should  be  successful.  Most  likely  it  would  not 
be  successful.  To  govern  by  wisdom  is  difficult.  It 
is  made  more  difficult  by  the  fact  that  abstractions 
about  self-determination  for  all  the  small  and  weak 
peoples  and  other  ideas  of  the  sort  were  easily 
uttered  in  the  excitement  of  the  crisis  of  the  war. 
They  have  reverberated  through  the  world  with  an 
echo  fairly  deafening,  from  quarters  which  were  not 
present  even  to  the  imagination  of  any  responsible 


146     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

person  at  the  moment  when  these  resounding  plati- 
tudes were  given  to  the  breeze. 

I  use  this  paragraph  about  Britain  and  India  or 
Egypt  only  as  an  illustration.  The  confidence  in  the 
good-will  of  Britain  which  many  people  of  these  re- 
gions had  gained  before  the  war  has  suffered  since 
the  armistice.  Or  at  least  the  cries  of  those  who 
proclaim  their  lack  of  confidence  are  more  loud.  It 
may  come  again  or  it  may  not.  Who  can  say  ?  Who 
can  foresee  what  will  happen  if  it  does  not  come 
again?  If  the  chapter  of  the  pacific  influence  which 
Great  Britain  has  latterly  exerted  upon  these  na- 
tions is  to  be  ended  in  the  near  future,  it  must,  at 
least  by  every  high  and  impartial  mind,  be  judged 
to  be  on  the  whole  one  of  the  best  which  the  world 
has  yet  written.  If  it  is  to  have  "  finis  "  written 
under  it,  if  Great  Britain  is  to  withdraw  from  the 
care  for  order  in  the  world  which  she  has  so  long 
borne  and  confine  herself  to  care  of  her  own  inter- 
ests, the  chapter  in  the  world  history  which  is  to 
come  next  will  certainly  be  looked  forward  to  with 
a  degree  of  perturbation  by  all  who  really  know  the 
aspect  which  these  quarters  of  the  world  present. 
This  is  a  new  world  situation.  In  it,  the  non-Chris- 
tian nations  have  been  so  far  remodeled  to  the 
standards  which  have  obtained  in  Christendom  that 
many  of  the  most  pressing  problems  of  civilization 
present  almost  exactly  the  same  aspect  in  India  or 
China  or  Japan  or  South  Africa  that  they  do  in  En- 
gland or  Italy  or  France  or  America.  They  must  be 
dealt  with  in  exactly  the  same  way  if  they  are  to 
be  dealt  with  at  all. 

Take  the  case  of  our  own  American  relations  to 
Japan.     We  can  all  remember  when  the  common 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     147 

sentiment  in  this  country  was  a  kindly  patronage 
of  Japan  and  a  sHghtly  marked  self-satisfaction  that 
it  had  been  we  who  brought  Japan  out  from  her  age- 
long isolation.  It  was  we  who  introduced  her  to  the 
great  modern  movement  which  she  evidently  finds 
congenial.  Now,  some  of  our  papers  are  saying,  and 
a  part  of  our  public  is  clamoring  that  Japan  has  so 
far  emerged  into  the  position  of  a  world  power  that 
she  is  a  menace  to  us.  We  may  be  entering  upon  an 
endless  competition  with  her  in  the  building  of 
navies.  We  treat  some  of  her  subjects  on  our  soil 
in  a  manner  that  touches  the  self-respect  of  a  proud 
and  able  people.  Or,  looking  at  it  from  the  other 
side,  time  was  when  the  Japanese  were  very  grateful 
to  us  Americans,  very  appreciative  of  that  which  we 
had  done  for  them,  very  trustful  of  us,  open  to  our 
influence,  putting  always  the  best  interpretation 
upon  our  conduct,  even  when,  upon  the  part  of  irre- 
sponsible persons,  this  was  not  all  that  could  have 
been  desired.  Now,  there  are  assuredly  those  in 
Japan  who  take  up  an  attitude  parallel  to  that  which 
I  have  deplored  among  ourselves.  I  should  be  glad 
to  believe  that  much  of  all  this  is  misapprehension 
and  misrepresentation.  Yet  we  all  know  that  we 
have  arrived  at  a  situation  which  is  not  simple  nor 
easy.  We  have  the  uncomfortable  sense  that  a  little 
fire  might  start  a  conflagration.  The  situation  calls 
for  nothing  so  much  as  for  those  reserves  and  graces, 
those  honors  and  honesties  of  which  the  Christian 
spirit  is  the  best  guaranty.  What  the  situation  de- 
mands is  the  disposition,  rather  let  me  say,  the  de- 
termination, to  view  all  of  these  new  complications 
which  may  ai'ise  between  ourselves  and  the  Japanese 
in  the  light  of  the  highest  moral  principle  and  the 


148     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

most  perfect  courtesy.  It  calls  for  an  impartial  view 
of  the  facts  and  for  just  and  generous  conduct  on 
the  basis  of  those  facts.  A  Christian  international- 
ism can  demand  of  itself  nothing  less  than  this.  It 
is  our  task  to  cultivate  this  spirit  so  widely  in  our 
own  midst  that  the  Japanese  will  know  that  this  is 
the  real  mind  of  America. 

Or  take  again  the  case  of  our  relations  to  China. 
Time  was  when  China  looked  to  us  as  her  great 
friend  among  the  nations.  Does  she  now  so  look  to 
us?  It  is  possible  that  we  do  not  yet  know  all  the 
facts  concerning  the  Shantung  question.  But  many 
of  the  Chinese  regard  the  course  of  our  government 
as  a  betrayal  of  their  country.  This  is,  however,  not 
the  only  matter.  It  is  possibly  not  the  greatest  mat- 
ter. Time  was  when  China  looked  to  us  with  un- 
bounded trust  when  exploited  and  threatened  by 
almost  every  nation  in  Christendom.  They  were  led 
so  to  look  to  us  by  all  our  early  history  in  relation  to 
them,  by  Secretary  Hay's  policy  of  the  "  open  door," 
by  our  treatment  of  the  question  of  indemnity  after 
the  Boxer  uprising,  by  many  diplomatic  episodes  in 
the  years  which  ensued.  They  had  been  so  led  by 
great  enterprises  for  education  and  medical  aid  and 
famine  relief,  not  to  speak  of  devoted  religious  and 
moral  work  in  their  midst,  by  sympathy  accorded 
them  in  the  establishment  of  their  republic.  This 
latter  sympathy  was,  to  a  certain  extent,  a  question 
rather  of  the  name  of  their  new  government  than  of 
any  real  knowledge  wide-spread  among  our  citizens 
of  the  difficulties  which  such  a  government  would 
meet  in  China,  or  of  a  firm  resolve  on  our  part  to 
help  the  Chinese  to  meet  these  difficulties.  In  her 
almost  total  inexperience  with  the  representative 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     149 

form  of  government  which  she  adopted  from  the 
West,  she  has  need  of  our  assistance.  In  the  suffer- 
ings incident  to  the  present  famine  we  are  pouring 
out  money  to  keep  men  and  women  and  children 
alive.  This  is  well.  It  is  the  least  we  can  do.  It  is 
the  kind  of  thing  which  our  people  is  fairly  certain 
to  do.  But  China  has  need  of  an  intellectual  and 
moral  support  which  goes  far  beyond  that  other. 
The  feeling  which  our  fathers  appear  to  have  had, 
that  there  are  far  worse  evils  than  poverty  or 
physical  ills,  seems  largely  lacking  among  us.  This 
fact  registers  itself  in  our  choice  of  the  things  which 
we  are  willing  to  do  in  our  treatment  of  industrial 
and  social  problems  in  our  own  midst.  It  registers 
itself  also  in  the  things  which  we  are  willing  to  do, 
and  the  things  which  we  are  not  willing  to  do,  on  be- 
half of  other  nations.  We  certainly  never  learned 
such  an  inversion  of  the  order  of  values  in  life  from 
the  gospel  of  Christ.  We  do  not  show  imagination  in 
respect  to  that  which  we  might  do  for  others.  We 
do  not  always  show  patience  and  continuance  in  that 
which  we  have  undertaken  to  do.  We  dislike  the 
thought  of  the  complications  into  which  such  a  re- 
sponsibility might  easily  bring  us  and  of  the  long 
time  that  the  completion  of  our  duty  might  perhaps 
demand. 

This  suggests  to  me  one  more  example,  the  only 
other  which  I  shall  use,  that  of  our  relation  to  the 
Ottoman  Empire.  One  of  the  wisest  and  best  efforts 
which  Americans  have  ever  made  in  the  direction 
of  international  helpfulness  has  been  proceeding  in 
the  Ottoman  Empire  for  a  hundred  years.  This  ef- 
fort has  included  the  founding  of  almost  a  score  of 
educational  institutions,  of  which  three  have  risen  to 


150     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

the  rank  of  real  universities,  one  of  these  being  for 
women.  It  has  included  a  work  of  the  press  in  the 
publication  of  translations  of  the  Bible  into  a  dozen 
languages,  of  great  literature  from  a  dozen  lan- 
guages, and  in  the  production  of  a  literature  of  cur- 
rent discussion  of  every  subject  which  censorship 
would  permit.  Of  the  magnitude  of  the  work  of  the 
press  centered  at  Constantinople  and  Beirut  few  of 
us  have  had  any  idea.  Our  effort  has  included  more- 
over the  work  of  medicine,  the  founding  of  medical 
schools  and  hospitals  and  dispensaries,  of  schools 
for  nurses,  and  the  actual  raising  up  of  hundreds  of 
native  doctors.  It  included  a  relation  of  peace  and 
comity  with  all  the  religions  of  the  Empire,  with  an 
endeavor  to  bring  to  these  an  intellectual  and  moral 
stimulus  which  they  have,  for  the  most  part,  grate- 
fully received.  It  has  established  centers  in  which, 
for  long  periods,  representatives  of  races  bitterly 
hostile  one  to  another  have  lived  together  in  mutual 
respect  and  regard.  It  has  revealed  to  them  the  pos- 
sibility of  a  life  of  the  Empire  in  which  they  might 
all  bear  a  peaceful  part.  It  has  included  the  train- 
ing of  representatives  of  not  less  than  twenty  na- 
tionalities to  work  for  the  enlightenment  and  the 
uplifting  of  their  respective  races,  and  to  try  con- 
jointly to  seek  the  advantage  of  that  portion  of  the 
world  in  which  they  lived. 

Does  any  one  need  to  be  told  with  what  confidence 
the  Armenians  looked  to  us  when  their  new  ordeal 
came  upon  them  in  1915  ?  Does  any  one  think  that 
we  have  lived  up  to  that  confidence?  I  am  not  say- 
ing that  we  were  bound  to  help  them  carry  out,  re- 
gardless of  everything  else,  their  nationalistic  hopes. 
We  were  bound  to  aid  them  and  all  the  other  races 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     151 

of  the  old  Empire,  after  the  armistice,  in  a  way  that 
might  have  prevented  the  dire  situation  in  which  the 
Armenians  now  are,  and  in  which  the  failure  of 
their,  perhaps  exaggerated,  nationalistic  hopes  seems 
likely  to  lead  to  the  dispersion  if  not  even  to  the 
annihilation  of  the  race.  We  could  not  aid  Turks 
during  the  war.  We  were  bound  to  help  them  also 
after  the  armistice,  because  all  who  know  the  Near 
Eastern  situation  realize  that  it  can  never  be  solved 
by  merely  taking  sides  in  immemorial  disputes.  This 
is  the  trouble  with  the  Near  Eastern  situation  now. 
The  European  powers  are  taking  sides.  The  in- 
digenous peoples  are  counting,  each  of  them,  upon 
some  one  of  the  European  peoples,  to  help  them 
carry  out  their  own  racial  ambitions.  The  Turks  in 
February,  1919,  besought  that  the  Americans  would 
not  leave  them  outside  of  that  protectorate  which 
they  then  fully  believed  that  we  were  going  to  estab- 
lish over  Christian  populations  in  their  former  em- 
pire. They  besought  us  that  we  would  extend  to 
them  also  the  same  assurance  of  public  order,  the 
same  basis  of  recovery  of  a  reasonable  prosperity, 
as  to  the  former  subject  races.  It  is  fairly  certain 
that  we  could  then  have  done  this  peaceably,  with 
the  active  cooperation  of  all  the  races  on  the  spot 
and  to  the  infinite  relief  of  every  nation  in  Europe. 
Because  of  our  abstention,  things  have  fallen  back 
into  the  old  hopeless  rut  of  the  murderous  feuds  be- 
tween the  indigenous  races  and  the  colonial  policies 
of  the  foreign  powers.  No  one  knows  what  the  fu- 
ture of  the  Near  Eastern  question  is  to  be.  It  is  the 
greatest  failure  we  have  ever  made.  Most  of  our 
people  actually  never  knew  what  was  happening,  else 
I  believe  that  they  would  have  made  their  wish  felt 


152     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

to  shoulder  some  portion  of  the  burden  of  humanity 
which  was  thus  laid  to  our  hand. 

We  refrained  in  this  tragic  fashion  from  taking 
in  the  Ottoman  question  the  part  which  all  our  past 
for  a  hundred  years  would  seem  to  have  prepared  us 
to  take.  That  was,  I  suppose,  in  some  measure  be- 
cause we  knew  that  this  question,  more  perhaps 
than  any  other,  would  involve  us  in  close  relations 
to  Europe.  We  for  a  moment  decided  against  taking 
any  further  part  in  European  or  world  affairs,  now 
that  the  war  was  done.  Was  ever  anything  more 
naive  than  thus  to  suppose  that  we  could  take  such 
stupendous  share  in  finishing  the  war  and  then  go 
home  as  if  we  had  no  obligation  whatever  to  do  our 
part  in  the  difficulties  and  dangers  of  the  peace  ?  It 
was  not  because  we  had  suffered  losses  in  men  for 
one  moment  to  be  compared  with  the  losses  of  the 
others.  It  was  not  because  we  were  impoverished. 
We  were  shy  of  complications.  We  thought  that  we 
could  revert  to  our  isolation.  We  had  not  imagina- 
tion enough  to  see  that  things  could  never  again  be 
as  they  had  been.  To  have  stayed  out  of  the  war 
might  have  been  treason  to  our  ideals  and  to  our  bet- 
ter selves.  As  defection,  however,  from  the  Allies 
and  from  the  cause  of  the  world,  this  would  not  have 
been  for  one  moment  comparable  with  the  drawing 
out  of  the  peace  after  we  had  taken  part  in  the  war. 
Our  leadership  was  inadequate  from  the  side  of  both 
political  parties.  We  may  say  that  impartially.  Yet 
every  one  knows  that,  had  the  American  public 
known  its  own  mind,  there  would  have  been  politi- 
cians enough  to  jostle  one  another  from  the  path  in 
the  effort  to  make  themselves  conspicuous  in  the 
carrying  out  of  that  mind.    As  a  nation  we  did  not 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     153 


know  that  the  period  after  the  war  was  going  to  be, 
in  some  ways,  far  worse  than  the  war  itself  and  that 
in  it  the  world  would  have  far  greater  need  of  us. 

You  recall  that  at  the  moment  of  the  outbreak  of 
the  war  this  was  viewed  in  this  country  mainly  as  a 
great  catastrophe  for  Europeans.     Before  it  had 
gone  on  long,  almost  all  of  us  began  to  realize  that 
it  was  a  crisis  for  humanity,  including  ourselves.    It 
was  a  crisis  for  civilization  in  the  issue  of  which 
we  were  inevitably  bound  up.    Our  sympathies  were 
touched  by  the  invasion  of  Belgium,  by  the  deporta- 
tions from  France,  by  the  tales,  at  first  incredible, 
of  the  ferocity  with  which  the  war  was  being  carried 
on.     Despite  the  atrocities  to  which  the  war  de- 
scended, barbarities  on  one  side  being  met  by  bar- 
barities on  the  other,  we  came  to  feel  that  the  war 
must  be  fought  through  in  any  case.     Our  sympa- 
thies drew  us  into  it.    The  unrestricted  submarine 
warfare  was  the  occasion  of  our  entrance.    It  was 
not  the  cause.     Slowly  the  American  people  was 
making  up  its  mind  that  the  whole  world  of  ideas 
and  principles  to  which  it  belonged  was  at  stake, 
that  we  were  a  part  of  Europe  and  Europe  was  a 
part  of  us.    When  the  youth  of  our  universities  and 
of  your  Seminary,  the  sons  of  our  bodies  as  well  as 
the  sons  of  our  souls,  took  themselves  overseas  to 
fight  for  the  common  cause  and  we  were  left  behind 
to  do  what  we  could  to  uphold  them  in  the  struggle, 
there  did  pass  over  this  nation  the  baptism  of  a 
lofty  internationalism.     We  had  a  sense  that  we 
belonged  to  the  world  and  that  a  part  of  the  highest 
interests  of  the  world,  its  liberty  and  enlightenment, 
the  stability  of  institutions  and  the  possibility  of 
mercy,  was  committed  to  us. 


154     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

We  cannot  but  go  back  in  mind,  those  of  us  who 
were  in  London  and  Paris  in  January,  1919,  to  the 
impression  made  by  the  representatives  of  the  Allied 
nations  as  to  their  attitude  toward  us  Americans. 
That  was  only  two  months  after  the  armistice.  We 
cannot  easily  forget  the  conflict  of  feeling  within 
our  own  souls.  They  lifted  us  up  in  their  idealization 
to  a  height  concerning  which  no  man  among  us  could 
fail  to  feel  that  we  did  not  deserve  it,  or  to  cherish 
poignant  anxiety  lest  we  might  not  be  able  to  main- 
tain it.  They  had  had  times  of  wondering  whether 
we  would  ever  enter  the  war,  but  at  last  we  had 
entered  it.  We  had  made  our  strength  effective  at 
a  time  when  theirs  had  been  supremely  taxed.  We 
had  thrown  into  the  balance  the  last  needed  element 
of  weight,  and  it  had  proved  sufficient.  They  would 
never  have  yielded,  and  the  Central  Powers,  as  we 
now  know,  were  very  near  the  end  of  their  resource. 
Yet  England  and  France  and  Italy  were  unspeakably 
grateful  for  the  aid  we  had  rendered  in  winning  the 
war.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  however,  that  they 
rejoiced  still  more  that  they  were  to  have  our  help 
in  the  settlement  of  the  problems  of  the  peace.  They 
ascribed  to  us  a  generous  readiness  to  aid  in  this 
regard.  We  on  our  part  already  sensed  the  begin- 
ning of  the  change  which  was  coming  over  the  mind 
of  our  country.  Those  were  rather  anxious  days  for 
Americans  of  information  and  judgment,  despite 
the  fact  that  there  was  so  much  to  bring  to  us  joy 
and  that  we  spoke  only  of  our  hopes.  The  true  ideal- 
ists among  us  believed  that  we  were  going  to  help 
to  put  international  relations  on  a  basis  on  which 
such  a  catastrophe  as  the  war  could  not  easily  hap- 
pen again.     No  one  then  dreamed  how  deep  the 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     155 

division  in  our  country  was  going  to  be  nor  how  the 
discussion  would  drag  on.  No  one  foresaw  how  this 
question  of  our  taking  part  in  the  reconstruction  of 
the  world  would  become  a  football  of  partisan  poli- 
tics in  a  presidential  year,  with  all  the  sordidness 
which  that  implies.  A  large  part  of  our  American 
public  did  not  realize  what  an  opportunity  we  had 
to  exert  a  moral  influence  in  the  stabilizing  of  in- 
ternational relations  after  the  long  agony  of  the  war. 
This  stabilization  the  European  nations  have  not 
even  yet  been  able  to  achieve  for  themselves.  Many 
among  our  fellow  citizens  had  then  no  idea  how 
those  countries  longed  for  our  aid  and  moral  support 
in  the  confusion  and  exhaustion  of  the  time.  They 
expected  such  reenforcement  from  this  utterly  un- 
spent power  from  over  the  sea,  unprejudiced  for 
territorial  reasons,  uncompromised  from  the  point 
of  view  of  trade,  unmoved  by  historic  animosities 
and  unhampered  by  colonial  ambitions  and  jealous- 
ies. We  had  really  entered  the  war  for  an  ideal. 
That  was  true.  They  thought  that  we  would  not 
desert  them  until,  in  some  measure,  that  ideal  was 
secured.  Had  we  realized  how  profoundly  we  were 
needed,  I  do  not  believe  that  our  own  tribulations, 
which  after  all  are  relatively  small,  would  ever  have 
deterred  us  from  seeking  to  fulfil  so  grand  an 
obligation. 

We  all  know  how  these  miserable  months  have 
dragged  on  and  lengthened  into  years.  We  are  not 
here  to  discuss  politics.  Recrimination  is  of  no  avail. 
But  the  question  as  to  what  we  are  going  to  do  about 
the  world's  woe  is  with  us  still.  And  I  repeat  that 
it  is  not  enough  to  subscribe  to  famine  funds.  It  is 
hardly  enough  to  spend  all  our  zeal  upon  the  recon- 


156     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

struction  of  buildings  in  devastated  areas.  If  we 
only  understood  ourselves  and  were  united  among 
ourselves,  if  we  were  determined  impartially  to  use 
all  of  our  strength  to  allay  evils  which  beset  others 
than  ourselves,  there  is  no  saying  what  a  calm  and 
powerful  nation,  standing  a  little  apart  from  these 
struggles,  yet  aiming,  for  the  love  of  mankind,  to 
take  up  the  burden  of  them,  might  still  do  to  hold 
a  needed  balance,  to  maintain  the  honest  friendship 
of  both  sides,  when  those  in  whose  company  we 
fought  are  beginning  to  drift  apart,  and  even,  in  the 
end,  to  make  friends  out  of  those  who  for  seven  long 
years  have  been  bitter  enemies. 

We  need  not  so  much  care  how  it  is  done.  We  all 
wish  to  maintain  the  methods  which  are  laid  down 
by  our  Constitution.  That  is  not  a  matter  for  de- 
bate. But  far  inside  of  the  Constitution,  and  far 
inside  of  all  the  proper  aims  and  interests  of  either 
one  of  our  political  parties,  we  all  know  that,  had  it 
not  been  for  the  partisan  and  personal  bitterness  of 
the  moment,  a  compromise  might  long  since  have 
been  arrived  at.  In  our  hearts,  we  all  know  that 
such  a  compromise  ought  now  to  be  arrived  at  with- 
out delay.  Long  ago  in  a  conversation  Lord  Bryce 
said: 

You  Americans,  under  an  exaggerated  reverence  for 
democracy,  take  public  opinion  for  a  kind  of  fait  accompli. 
If  public  opinion  is  against  you,  you  think  that  that  settles 
the  matter.  It  is  for  you  to  win  over  public  opinion  to  your 
side.  It  is  for  you  to  make  public  opinion.  High  public 
opinion  always  begins  with  minorities,  with  indivduals. 

It  is  in  order  to  have  a  little  part  in  making  public 
opinion  on  these  questions  in  which  I  am  so  pro- 
foundly concerned,  that  I  am  now  speaking.    It  is 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     157 


with  you  that  I  plead  that  you  will  henceforth  work 
unceasingly  to  unmake  a  mistaken  public  opinion, 
as  it  prevails  about  you,  and  to  put  a  right  opinion 
in  its  place.  We  must  help  Europe,  not  merely  and 
not  mainly  out  of  our  pockets,  but  with  all  the  trea- 
sures of  our  souls.  If  we  do  not,  there  is  no  knowing 
where  the  catastrophe  in  Europe  will  end.  Indeed, 
under  such  a  denial  of  all  the  nobler  elements  in  our 
national  and  personal  life,  we  shall  have  given  evi- 
dence that  the  supreme  moral  catastrophe  has 
already  happened  to  us  Americans.  When  that  has 
once  happened  all  other  catastrophes  follow  of  them- 
selves. 

One  thing  there  is  which  hinders  our  clear  sight 
in  this  regard.  It  is  a  thing  which  I  find  it  a  little 
difficult  to  describe.  Yet  it  is  happening  every  day 
before  our  eyes.  We  are  a  composite  nation,  as 
heterogeneous  in  our  make-up  as  any  nation  ever 
was.  The  old  English  and  Scottish  stock  which  was 
almost  pure  at  the  beginning  is  now  only  a  small 
part  of  our  population.  Men  of  every  race  in  Europe 
are  found  upon  our  shores.  That  ought  to  make  of 
us  a  nation  with  international  sympathies.  We  be- 
lieve that  it  will  do  so  when  we  are  thoroughly  fused 
into  a  national  unity.  It  does  not  yet  do  so  because 
these  elements  often  exist  only  side  by  side.  They 
are  not  amalgamated  into  one.  We  have  no  spiritual 
unity.  The  presence  of  all  these  racial  strains  in 
our  national  make-up  ought  to  insure  our  under- 
standing of  the  troubles  and  dangers  of  all.  It 
ought  to  insure  a  calm  and  considerate  action  as 
nearly  as  possible  in  the  interest  of  all.  As  yet  it 
does  nothing  of  the  sort.  It  fails  of  this  because  we 
are  not  as  yet  one  nation.    We  are  only  fragments 


158     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

of  many.  Sometimes  it  would  appear  as  if  the  situa- 
tion I  describe  secured  nothing  but  the  perpetuation 
on  our  soil  of  misunderstandings  and  antipathies,  of 
feuds  and  animosities,  which  have  been  brought  over 
unchanged  from  other  soils.  These  feuds  and  ani- 
mosities should  have  no  place  in  the  minds  of  men 
and  women  who  have  truly  become  Americans  and 
have  embraced  the  representatives  of  all  other  races, 
of  whatever  origin,  in  a  real  and  deep  Americanism. 
As  it  is,  these  bitternesses  reappear  on  our  shores 
intensified.  Fierce  propaganda  for  some  nation  or 
fragment  of  a  nation  on  the  other  side  of  the  sea 
has  for  its  aim,  so  far  as  possible,  to  array  all  Ameri- 
cans on  the  side  of  its  own  frantic  contention.  Agi- 
tators desire  to  make  it  appear  that  all  Americans 
side  with  their  particular  party  and  wish  the  de- 
struction of  its  enemies  three  thousand  miles  away. 
Were  we  really  a  unified,  amalgamated  people,  this 
could  not  possibly  happen.  Then  the  trace  in  the 
blood  of  every  nation  would  have  only  the  ennobling 
consequence  of  a  universal  sympathy.  Then  we 
should  have  a  mind  of  our  own  and  should  know  that 
mind.  We  should  understand  that  our  task  is  not  to 
take  sides  in  these  old  feuds  at  the  behest  of  new  ar- 
rivals from  foreign  shores,  who  only  yesterday  be- 
gan to  call  these  their  shores.  Our  task  is  to  aid  both 
parties  in  every  such  quarrel  to  an  adjustment  of 
their  difficulties,  as  only  a  calm  and  strong  outsider 
who,  nevertheless,  has  genuine  sympathy  can  aid. 

The  most  poignant  recollections  of  the  month 
immediately  following  the  armistice  have  been  ex- 
pressed in  a  notable  article  written  for  the  New 
York  "  Evening  Post  "  of  March  2,  1921,  by  General 
Smuts,  the  Premier  of  the  Union  of  South  Africa. 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     159 

He  speaks  at  a  level  far  above  the  disposition  to  lay 
the  blame  of  the  immeasurable  catastrophe  which  the 
peace  thus  far  has  proved  upon  individual  men.    He 
lays  it  upon  nations,  his  own  nation  among  the  rest, 
upon  humanity  as  a  whole.     In  similar  high  vein, 
Albert  Pauphilet,  writing  in  the  "  New  Europe  " 
of  August  12,  1920,  confesses  the  dire  declension 
which  had  taken  place  in  the  spirit  of  his  own  coun- 
try, France,  during  the  years  1919  and  1920.     I 
speak  that  we  may  here  together  confess  our  own 
part  also  in  this  universal  guilt  and  shame,  and  re- 
pent of  our  share  in  the  world-wide  misfortune  and 
take  high  resolve  that  we  will  not  rest  until  we  have 
moved  the  heart  of  our  American  people  to  do  its 
share  in  reparation  of  the  fault.    We  have  poured 
out  our  treasure  to  alleviate  the  miseries  of  sick 
and  wounded,  of  widows  and  orphans,  of  the  home- 
less and  impoverished,  of  peoples  who  have  wit- 
nessed   massacres    and    deportations    or    suffered 
plague  and  famine.    We  have  not  stopped  with  those 
who  had  been  our  associates  in  the  struggle.    We 
have  reached  out  to  those  who  have  been  our  foes 
as  well.    We  could  not  do  otherwise.    Yet  as  I  wit- 
ness the  extravagance  and  self-indulgence  in  our 
own  country  even  in  the  face  of  the  high  cost  of 
living  and  of  higher  taxes,  I  still  ask,  "  Could  people 
live  and  spend  in  this  fashion,  if  they  really  visual- 
ized one  half  of  the  misery  of  the  world?  "    You  will 
answer  me  that  there  is  a  measure  of  similar  bar- 
baric luxury  and  recklessness  in  evidence  in  France 
and  Great  Britain  at  this  moment,  and  one  hears  of 
it  even  in  Germany  and  Austria.    So  much  the  worse 
for  them.    Surely  that  does  not  make  the  case  better 
for  us.    Such  monstrous  things  must  be  exceptional 


160     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

there,  where  people  really  see  the  awfulness  of  the 
distress.  They  would  only  show  the  inconceivable 
depravity  of  individuals  who  are  guilty  of  such 
crimes  against  humanity.  Here,  these  evils  are  less 
conscious  and,  if  you  please,  less  guilty,  because 
many  people  do  not  really  know.  For  that  very 
reason,  the  evil  is  more  wide-spread.  The  average 
comfortable  American  can  form  no  conception  of 
what  parts  of  France  and  Italy  or,  again,  of  the 
Balkans  and  Asia  Minor  look  like.  Nothing  in  his 
past  enables  him  even  to  imagine  their  desolation 
and  distress.  He  thinks  the  accounts  of  it  exag- 
gerated, sentimental,  or  even  that  they  have  their 
origin  in  propaganda.  Surely  some  of  our  young 
Americans  who  are  returning  from  the  service  in 
Poland  or  under  the  Near  East  Relief  Committee 
can  disabuse  his  mind  as  to  that. 

Yet  ever  again  I  recur  to  the  thought  that  it  is 
not  a  still  larger  and  never-ending  stream  of  benefi- 
cence which  is  the  thing  most  needed.  We  poured 
out  blood  in  the  war.  We  have  poured  out  money 
since  the  armistice.  But  we  have  still  one  thing  to 
give  which  the  other  nations  of  the  world  most  sorely 
need.  What  is  needed  in  most  cases  is  that  we  should 
help  the  peoples  again  to  get  upon  their  own  feet. 
It  is  with  nations  as  it  is  with  individuals,  that 
which  is  requisite  to  this  end  is  not  mere  material 
assistance.  It  is  the  putting  forth  in  new  courage 
and  hope  of  their  own  spiritual  qualities.  Those 
who  help  most  and  best  are  those  who  pour  out  of 
their  own  spiritual  qualities  in  the  effort  to  render 
aid.  What  is  demanded  of  us  is  that  we  put  our 
shoulder  under  some  portion  of  their  moral  respon- 
sibility, that  we  take  up  a  part  of  the  burden  of 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     161 

their  anxieties,  of  the  load  laid  upon  them  by  that 
which  they  have  suffered  in  their  inner  life.  What 
is  demanded  is  that  we  give  ourselves.  We  should 
know  this  to  be  true  if  we  were  trying  to  help  in- 
dividuals. It  is  not  different  in  the  help  of  nations 
to  the  recovery  of  their  own  best  selves  and  the 
reparation  of  the  catastrophes  of  their  inner  life. 

Before  the  war,  we  had  the  reputation  in  some 
quarters  of  a  selfish  and  crude  materialism.  It  was 
a  reputation  which  we  esteemed  deeply  unjust.  We 
knew  that  it  was  unjust.  Masses  of  our  people 
might  be  raw  and  ignorant,  but  we  were  sure  of  their 
idealism.  For  a  brief  moment  we  proved  to  men  of 
all  the  world  that  we  were  right  and  they  were 
wrong.  We  had  followed  the  highest  idealism.  For 
a  moment  thereafter,  they  idealized  us  too  much,  as 
perhaps  before  they  had  idealized  us  not  enough. 
Yet  surely  we  have  only  ourselves  to  blame  if  in 
these  two  years  we  have  fallen  far  in  their  esteem. 
It  is  small  wonder  if  they  feel  that  their  earlier  judg- 
ment of  us  was  correct  and  that  the  estimate  of  two 
years  ago  was  a  mistake.  Most  of  all  we  have  called 
down  this  bitter  judgment  on  ourselves  by  the  fact 
that  we  have  in  such  surprising  fashion  stood  apart 
from  the  efforts  made  through  the  union  of  nations 
to  secure  the  conditions  of  a  just  and  lasting  peace. 
The  abstention  of  no  nation  from  that  effort  would 
have  been  so  unexpected  or  seemed  so  inexplicable. 
We  could  have  done  in  the  sphere  of  the  morale  of 
nations  so  easily  that  which  others  can  now  do  only 
with  the  greatest  difficulty,  or  cannot  do  at  all.  It 
may  be  only  excitement  and  a  sense  of  disappoint- 
ment, with  a  realization  of  their  weakness  over 
against  our  terrific  strength,  which  makes  them 


162     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

think  of  us  as  possible  aggressive  enemies.  We  are 
not  conscious  of  being  enemies  to  any  of  them.  Yet 
do  you  wonder  that  they  look  upon  us  with  suspicion 
and  with  that  most  cruel  and  delusive  of  all  mental 
attitudes,  one  which  they  have  never  before  felt,  the 
attitude  of  fear?  We  are  not  conscious  yet  of  aggres- 
sive intentions,  but  out  of  the  conscious  possession 
of  such  dangerous  power  an  aggressive  intention 
may  grow  up.  This  is  a  perilous  situation  both  from 
their  side  and  ours.  Do  you  wonder  that  our  deter- 
mination to  hold  aloof  from  them  breeds  in  them 
the  intention  to  hold  aloof  from  us?  Do  you  wonder 
that  our  announced  determination  to  revise  all 
agreements  which  they  have  entered  into  without  us 
looks  strange  to  them,  when  they  recall  how  they 
besought  us,  almost  on  their  knees,  to  join  them  and 
have  part  in  the  making  of  these  very  arrangements  ? 
There  is  scarcely  a  nation  in  the  world  which  is  not 
today  in  doubt  about  us,  and  we  alone  have  created 
that  doubt.  The  most  thoughtful  in  our  own  midst 
must  share  this  uneasiness.  We  do  not  yet  know 
exactly  what  the  steps  in  our  own  national  policy 
toward  the  other  nations  really  mean.  We  have 
moments  when  we  think  that  they  mean  nothing 
coherent  or  consistent  or  intelligible.  None  the  less, 
we  are  aware  that  they  might  be  construed  by  others 
to  mean  almost  anything.  We  are  overwhelmingly 
sure  that  the  mass  of  our  people  mean  no  ill.  Yet 
we  own  that  now  and  then  appearances  are  mightily 
against  us. 

There  is  scarcely  a  nation  in  the  world  which  is 
confidently  and  unqualifiedly  friendly  to  us.  Yet 
there  is  scarcely  a  nation  in  the  world  which  is  not 
yearning  for  our  friendship  and  aid  in  the  solving 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     163 


of  the  moral  and  spiritual  problems  of  humanity,  if 
we  would  only  give  them  our  friendship  in  the  open- 
hearted  way  in  which  they  once  thought  that  we  had 
given  it.  We  ourselves  once  thought  that  we  were 
giving  it.  Many  of  us  are  bewildered  and  contrite 
to  find  that  we  have  not  given  it.  This  is  a  moral 
failure  of  the  first  magnitude.  It  may  at  any  time 
become  a  catastrophe.  It  is  not  for  us  to  sit  silent  in 
this  condition.  It  is  not  for  us  to  acquiesce  in  help- 
lessness. It  is  for  us  to  make  that  part  of  our  Amer- 
ican people  which  is  still  sound  at  heart  hear  what 
we  have  to  say.  It  is  for  us  to  make  our  rulers  hear 
what  we  have  to  say.  It  is  for  us  to  make  the  other 
nations  hear  what  we  have  to  say.  It  is  for  us  to 
win  them  to  believe  what  we  believe  about  our  na- 
tion's better  mind,  despite  the  tragic  failure  of  the 
past  and  the  problematical  appearances  of  the 
present. 

This  brings  me,  in  closing,  to  the  point  in  which 
every  discussion  of  the  religious  spirit  must  begin 
and  end,  the  point  of  individual  duty  and  respon- 
sibility. Christianity  cherishes  the  individual  be- 
cause it  knows  that  out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues 
of  life.  Christianity  cherishes  the  individual  be- 
cause Christ  taught  that  the  world  can  never  be 
moved  to  its  highest  ends  and  finest  issues  save  by 
the  reaching  of  the  hearts  of  individual  men.  If  the 
world  could  have  been  saved  by  program,  it  would 
have  been  saved  long  ago.  The  programs  of  others 
than  Jesus  would  have  led  us  far  on  the  way  toward 
that  desired  result.  The  program  of  Jesus  would 
have  led  us  all  the  way,  we  Christians  say,  if  only 
it  had  been  supremely  obeyed  by  many,  or  even  re- 
spectably obeyed  by  all.     It  is  not  the  failure  of 


164     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

ideas,  it  is  the  failure  of  allegiance  to  them  which 
distresses  us.  It  is  the  obsession  of  our  time  that 
by  change  of  government  or  by  destruction  of  all 
government,  by  creation  of  wealth  or  new  distribu- 
tion of  wealth  already  created,  you  can  insure  the 
welfare  of  mankind.  The  utmost  that  you  can  thus 
bring  about  is  a  condition  of  relative  advantage  or 
disadvantage  for  the  souls  of  men.  All  great  states 
are  made  by  great  men.  When  these  fail,  states  fail. 
All  great  institutions  come  out  of  the  insight  and 
purpose  of  individuals.  And  not  only  is  the  individ- 
ual the  source  of  all  the  greatness  in  the  world,  he  is 
also  the  only  worthy  end  and  aim  of  any  other  sort 
of  greatness  in  the  world.  A  democracy  which,  in  a 
kind  of  frenzy  for  equality,  in  a  prejudice  against 
superiorities,  refuses  the  leadership  of  the  wise  and 
good  is  doomed.  A  state  which  will  have  all  men 
on  a  level  condemns  all  to  a  low  level.  A  class  which 
will  permit  no  individual  in  it  to  rise  makes  it  im- 
possible for  society  to  rise.  A  group  which  wishes 
no  gain  to  the  world  as  a  whole,  or  even  to  its  own 
self,  by  the  aid  of  persons  or  groups  which  represent 
other  aptitudes  and  achievements  in  life  than  its 
own,  is  capable  of  no  serious  achievement.  The  in- 
ternationalism for  which  we  plead  is  no  more  hostile 
to  a  true  nationalism  and  a  right  patriotism  than  is 
the  respect  for  other  men*s  homes  inimical  to  the 
love  of  our  own.  There  is  every  reason  why  we 
should  seek  with  joy  the  highest  development  of 
our  own  community.  There  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  attain  that  without  being  diregardful  of 
the  good  of  other  communities.  In  truth,  there  is 
no  possibility  of  our  ever  attaining  our  own  highest 
good  if  we  are  thus  disregardful.    We  have  come  a 


Christian  Spirit  and  International  Relations     165 

long  way  in  the  recognition  of  the  principle  as  be- 
tween individuals  that  "  No  man  liveth  unto  him- 
self." The  next  step  necessary  to  the  welfare  of 
the  world  is  the  recognition  of  the  principle  that 
no  nation  can  live  to  itself.  The  other  things  of 
which  we  boast  in  our  modern  world,  our  facilities 
of  transportation,  our  apparatus  for  communica- 
tion, our  interdependence  in  trade,  prove  that  to  us 
every  day.  This  was  measurably  true  before  the 
war.  It  is  far  more  true  since  the  war,  because  now 
our  sufferings  and  the  moral  exigency  which  is 
everywhere  forbids  us  to  draw  apart.  There  is  a 
unity  of  life  between  ourselves  and  Europe,  between 
ourselves  and  Asia  or  Africa,  which  never  existed 
before  and  can  never  again  cease  to  exist.  We  may 
like  it  or  dislike  it.  We  abetted  it  once  when  we 
thought  only  that  we  should  gain  by  it.  Now  that 
it  throws  increased  obligation  upon  us,  we  perhaps 
resent  it  and  resist  it  and  would  withdraw  from 
it  if  we  could.  It  is  of  no  avail.  We  must  face  it 
and  embrace  it.  We  must  make  it  the  instrument, 
this  world  unity,  of  the  execution  of  new  and  larger 
purposes  for  humanity  as  a  whole.  We  must  make 
it  the  instrument,  this  world  unity,  of  new  and 
nobler  realizations  of  ourselves.  To  that  common 
end,  every  race  must  dedicate  all  that  fortune  has 
brought  it,  all  that  suffering  has  bestowed  upon  it, 
all  that  subtle  and  infinitely  precious  thing  which  a 
racial  characteristic  constitutes.  To  this  end,  every 
class  in  every  nation  must  contribute  by  virtue  of 
the  very  qualities  which  are  the  treasures  of  its  past 
and  its  identical  character  in  the  present.  To  this, 
every  individual  must  subordinate  and  consecrate 
himself  with  all  that  belongs  to  him  as  individual. 


166     The  Christian  Faith  and  Human  Relations 

It  has  long  been  taught,  and  now  and  then  even  been 
accepted,  that  men  and  women  are  made  great  when 
they  give  themselves  to  the  best  ends  in  life,  out  of 
the  love  of  men,  in  the  spirit  of  Christ  and  to  the 
honor  of  God.  It  is  equally  true  of  classes  and  na- 
tions. All  the  other  greatnesses  which  they  seek  by 
treason  to  this  one  only  lead  us  back  into  the  same 
fatal  round  in  which  men  have  toiled  and  wept  and 
suffered  and  been  defeated  since  the  world  began. 


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